Self Rules Quotes & Sayings

The power of monsters is their ability to fuse opposites, to merge contraries, to subvert rules, to overthrow cognitive barriers, moral distinction, and ontological categories. Monsters overcome the barrier of time itself. Uniting past and present, demonic and divine, guilt and conscience, predator and prey, parent and child, self and alien, our monsters are our innermost selves. — David D. Gilmore

Wizard's Tenth Rule
Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self. — Terry Goodkind

Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self. — W. H. Auden

I mentioned early in this book the kind of rereading distinctive of a fan
the Tolkien addict, say, or the devotee of Jane Austen or Trollope or the Harry Potter books. The return to such books is often motivated by a desire to dwell for a time in a self-contained fictional universe, with its own boundaries and its own rules. (It is a moot question whether Austen and Trollope's first readers were drawn to their novels for these reasons, but their readers today often are.) Such rereading is not purely a matter of escapism, even though that is one reason for its attraction: we should note that it's not what readers are escaping from but that they are escaping into that counts most. Most of us do not find fictional worlds appealing because we find our own lives despicable, though censorious people often make that assumption. Auden once wrote that "there must always be ... escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep." The sleeper does not disdain consciousness. — Alan Jacobs

Part of the depressive syndrome is that you are immensely loyal to your interpretation of yourself and your world. If God says you are forgiven in Christ, you create new rules that mandate contrition, penance, and self-loathing. If God says he loves you, you insist it is impossible. There it is: your system is higher than God's. — Edward T. Welch

Forget the past, think of future, remember God's goodness and His power and ability to take you to where you ought to be and establish you. — Jaachynma N.E. Agu

People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules. — Wayne Dyer

Most rules are made by people with no authority who want to control and limit you from reaching your true potential. Ignore them, break their rules, and wave at them as you soar past them to greatness. — Dan Pearce

Conformity is not an admirable trait. Conformity is a copout. It threatens self-awareness. It can lead groups to enforce rigid and arbitrary rules. — Alexandra Robbins

As long as a sense of self-importance rules your being, you will never know lasting peace. — Matthieu Ricard

TEN RULES FOR WINNING THE GAME OF CONFIDENCE The actions of confidence come first; the feelings of confidence come later. Genuine confidence is not the absence of fear; it is a transformed relationship with fear. Negative thoughts are normal. Don't fight them; defuse them. Self-acceptance trumps self-esteem. True success is living by your values. Hold your values lightly, but pursue them vigorously. Don't obsess about the outcome; get passionate about the process. Don't fight your fear: allow it, befriend it, and channel it. Failure hurts - but if we're willing to learn, it's a wonderful teacher. The key to peak performance is total engagement in the task. — Russ Harris

The Fairness Principle: When contemplating a moral action imagine that you do not know if you will be the moral doer or receiver, and when in doubt err on the side of the other person. This is based on the philosopher John Rawls's concepts of the "veil of ignorance" and the "original position" in which moral actors are ignorant of their position in society when determining rules and laws that affect everyone, because of the self-serving bias in human decision making. — Michael Shermer

He hands her his pack, which he's emptied. "You mean me?" Justineau demands. "You think I'm not pulling my weight?" It would feel good to have a stand-up argument with Parks right then, but he doesn't seem keen to play. "No, I didn't mean you. I meant in general." "People in general? You were being philosophical?" "I was being a grumpy bastard. It's what I wear to the office most days. I guess you probably noticed that." She hesitates, wrong-footed. She didn't think Parks was capable of self-deprecation. But then she didn't think he was capable of changing his mind. "Any more rules of engagement?" she asks him, still hurting in some obscure way, still not mollified. "How to survive when shopping? Top tips for modern urban living?" Parks gives the question more consideration than she was expecting. "Use up the last of that e-blocker," he suggests. "And don't die. — M.R. Carey

One of my rules is never to look sideways at what other people are doing but instead, do what I feel is right. — Annie Bryant

Holding one's self responsible is a critical feature in stigma and in the generation of shame since violation of standards, rules, and goals are insufficient in its elicitation unless responsibility can be placed on the self. Stigma may differ from other elicitors of shame and guilt, in part because it is a social appearance factor. The degree to which the stigma is socially apparent is the degree to which one must negotiate the issue of blame, not only for one's self but between one's self and the other who is witness to the stigma. Stigmatization is a much more powerful elicitor of shame and guilt in that it requires a negotiation not only between one's self and one's attributions, but between one's self and the attributions of others. — Michael Lewis

Use the information you've been given as an individual, but NEVER let what you've heard or read or experienced in the past prevent you from answering the call on your life.

You are responsible for your life. That includes the voice inside you and everything it calls you to do. Don't ignore that voice to follow rules that don't fit. When a jacket doesn't fit anymore, it's time to donate it. Same principle applies for rules which no longer serve you.

You don't have to curse the rules or condemn them. In fact, there might be someone else who would benefit from them at the exact moment you no longer need them.

Just step into all that you can be and all that you can do. — Stephen Lovegrove

The meaning of self-esteem is to feel lovable and capable. As parents, we must love our children unconditionally and give them a sense of being nurtured. That's the lovable part. Then, we must provide structure - rules, boundaries, daily or weekly household tasks that give them a sense they are making a contribution. That's what helps kids grow up feeling capable. — Jack Canfield

Civil disobedience presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it civil disobedience would be a cruel joke. — Mahatma Gandhi

But the more time has been released from production, the more imperative it has become to absorb that time in consumption and consumerism, given that, as was earlier argued, capitalist 'economic rationality has no room for authentically free time which neither produces nor consumes commercial wealth'. The ever-present danger is that freely associating and self-creating individuals, liberated from the chores of production and blessed with a whole range of labour-saving and time-saving technologies to aid their consumption, might start to build an alternative non-capitalistic world. They might become inclined to reject the dominant capitalist economic rationality, for example, and start evading its overwhelming but often cruel rules of time discipline. To avoid such eventualities, capital must not only find ways to absorb more and more goods and services through realisation but also somehow occupy the free time that the new technologies release. — David Harvey

One of the rules on that list I'm not making is DON'T COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS. What you, as a human being, need to realize is you're you. There is nobody else that will be a better you. Comparing yourself to others is what ends up ruining your self esteem. Everything about you is absolutely amazing. You're another wonderful work of art created by the universe. You're EXACTLY what you need to be. A beautiful, working, thinking, breathing, moving, feeling, living work of art. Nothing could possibly be more fantastic than your existence. — Hailey Burke

One of the rules that emerges from a consideration of the factors that promote self-sacrifice is that we are less ready to die for what we have or are than for what we wish to have and to be. It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have "something worth fighting for," they do not feel like fighting. People who live full, worthwhile lives are not usually ready to die for their own interests nor for their country nor for a holy cause. — Eric Hoffer

It amazes me that you will hear great concern from inside the church about too much grace, but rarely will you ever hear great concern from inside the church about too many rules. Indeed, the absurdity of God's indiscriminate compassion always gets "religious" people up in arms. Why? Because we are, by nature, glory-hoarding, self-centered control freaks - God wannabes. That's why. — Tullian Tchividjian

[Science] works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are
worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be. The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true. — Carl Sagan

Government workers think the job of everyone else in the economy is to protect their high salaries, crazy work rules and obscene pensions. They self-righteously lecture us about public service, the children, a 'living wage' all in the service of squeezing more money from the taxpayer to fund their breathtakingly selfish job arrangements. — Ann Coulter

Those who live as though God sets the rules are not going by their own rules. That is the self-sacrifice, or selflessness, that peace more often than not requires. Those who insist on going by their own rules cannot make that sacrifice. They are the steady adherents of (global) conflict because they are forever fighting both themselves and others to do whatever they think that they want to do. — Criss Jami

What is success? What does it mean that someone is successful?
Success can be different things to different people. For us being successful is a conscious choice to be oneself. Success does not have to be dependent on any external circumstances and rules dictated by the mainstream society.
It does not matter where we live and what we possess. When we love and support ourselves unconditionally choosing to be ourselves as much as we can, this is for us, Being Successful. — Raphael Zernoff

Time now to consider the compacts that hold the world together: the compact between ruler and ruled, and that between husband and wife. Both of these arrangements rest on a sedulous devotion the one to the interests of the other. The master and husband protect and provide; the wife and servant obey. Above masters, above husbands, God rules all. He counts up our petty rebellions, our human follies. He reaches out his long arm, hand bunched into a fist.
It is time to say what England is, her scope and boundaries: not to count and measure her harbor defenses and border walls, but to estimate her capacity for self-rule. It is time to say what a king is, and what trust and guardianship he owes his people: what protection from foreign incursions moral or physical, what freedom from the pretensions of those who would like to tell an Englishman how to speak to his God. — Hilary Mantel

Everything lives on earth according to the law of nature, and from that law emerges the glory and joy of liberty; but man is denied this fortune, because he set for the God-given soul a limited and earthly law of his own. He made for himself strict rules. Man built a narrow and painful prison in which he secluded his affections and desires. He dug out a deep grave in which he buried his heart and its purpose. If an individual, through the dictates of his soul, declares his withdrawal from society and violates the law, his fellowmen will say he is a rebel worthy of exile, or an infamous creature worthy only of execution. Will man remain a slave of self-confinement until the end of the world? Or will he be freed by the passing of time and live in the Spirit for the Spirit? Will man insist upon staring downward and backward at the earth? Or will he turn his eyes toward the sun so he will not see the shadow of his body amongst the skulls and thorns? — Kahlil Gibran

The capacity for personal freedom is a rare talent. Talent exists to be used. We do not ask sheep to be wolves; we, the wolves, do not ask ourselves to be sheep. Sheep can make such rules as happen to suit them
but it's foolishly naive to expect wolves to obey. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Today, many will choose to live free of conditions and rules governing their own happiness. Why not you? Do not let another day go by where your dedication to other people's opinions is greater than your dedication to your own emotions! Today's a new day! — Steve Maraboli

People and their values are almost infinitely diverse, and people will never agree on many elements of social arrangements that might be subjected to uniform rules of governance. Hence, the greater the scope of strictly individual self-determination, the lesser the scope of governance, and the greater the tolerance with which people live and let live among their fellows, the more peaceful and flourishing society will be — Robert Higgs

Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are no schools for creativeness. A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made. — Ludwig Von Mises

Whenever a climber leaves the known paths, he enters an area without rules or routines ... The only advice comes from deep inside the self. — Wojciech Kurtyka

The Path to the Truth is a labour of the heart, not of the head. Make your heart your primary guide. Not your mind. Meet, challenge, and ultimately prevail over your nafs (false ego) with your heart. Knowing your ego (higher self/soul) will lead you to the knowledge of God. (2) — Various

All I'm arguing for really is that we should have a conversation where the best ideas really thrive, where there's no taboo against criticizing bad ideas, and where everyone who shows up, in order to get their ideas entertained, has to meet some obvious burdens of intellectual rigor and self-criticism and honesty - and when people fail to do that, we are free to stop listening to them. What religion has had up until this moment is a different set of rules that apply only to it, which is you have to respect my religious certainty even though I'm telling you I arrived at it irrationally. — Sam Harris

Just as creativity enables us to envision novel solutions to tough problems, it can also enable us to develop original paths around rules, all the while allowing us to reinterpret information in a self-serving way. Putting our creative minds to work can help us come up with a narrative that lets us have our cake and eat it too, and create stories in which we're always the hero, never the villain. If the key to our dishonesty is our ability to think of ourselves as honest and moral people while at the same time benefitting from cheating, creativity can help us tell better stories - stories that allow us to be even more dishonest but still think of ourselves as wonderfully honest people. — Dan Ariely

It is not possible to spend any prolonged period visiting public school classrooms without being appalled by the mutilation visible everywhere - mutilation of spontaneity, of joy in learning, or pleasure in creating, or sense of self ... Because adults take the schools so much for granted, they fail to appreciate what grim, joyless places most American schools are [they are much the same in most countries], how oppressive and petty are the rules by which they are governed, how intellectually sterile and esthetically barren the atmosphere, what an appalling lack of civility obtains on the part of teachers and principals, what contempt they unconsciously display for students as students. — John Holt

He who wants to educate himself in Chess must evade what is dead in Chess ... the habit of playing with inferior opponents; the custom of avoiding difficult tasks; the weakness of uncritically taking over variations or rules discovered by others; the vanity which is self-sufficient; the incapacity for admitting mistakes; in brief, everything that leas to standstill or to anarchy. — Emanuel Lasker

One of the cardinal rules of joyful living is that judging others takes a great deal of energy and, without exception, pulls you away from where you want to be. — Richard Carlson

Yes, I see you. I recognize that you're a thinking, feeling person, and I'm here to listen." That's the essence and magic of meditation - the gift of telling yourself that you matter and that you're worth time and attention. No pomp. No circumstance. No
rules. Just showing up for yourself with compassion and without judgment. When this is your practice, meditation can serve as a mirror and the lighthouse that leads you home. — Rebekah Borucki

Discovering passion and purpose requires figuring out what works and what doesn't. Mature, successful people establish their on rules. These rules are measured by only one standard: do they work? — Robert A. Glover

Ixion exists as an antidote to the rules and conventions of other places. We believe that indulging in pleasure will make better people. Self-denial and discipline and virtue are all myths invented to control you. — Marianne De Pierres

Polarities of the 'authentic' vs. the 'inauthentic' are easily discernible in recreational modes. The criteria of authenticity are not necessarily objective but rather have to do with the rules by which the self allows or disallows its own experience. — Walker Percy

That's what self-discovery seems to mean to most people. You're going to beat yourself up. You're going to reduce what you're supposed to be and do to a set of rules so you can defy them, or so you can perform them and feel smug. — Frederick Lenz

There are rules in advertising, and those rules are self-imposed by the client companies because they don't want their products to be seen as dishonest. — Paul Arden

... Within the mind, especially the mind under great stress... boundaries of space and time are meaningless, and the... interior self lives by other rules and in other dimensions. — Frederick Busch

It wasn't that Lorrie Ann was becoming a Goody Two-shoes. It wasn't that she wanted to be perfect or loved or approved of. No. She wanted something much more dangerous. She wanted meaning. And she thought it could be gotten by following the rules. — Rufi Thorpe

Then there were her rules, rules that stated quite clearly that he was a 'no-go' area. She drew a deep breath and tried to make a decision in keeping with her rules. But the words would not come. She could not decide to give him up. Her inner self would not even contemplate it. Somehow, he had touched her soul in a way that she could not explain adequately. She felt a link there that was too real to consider severing. Kate felt the anguish of this conflict between her morality and her acceptance of the bond that did exist between them, despite her incredulity and despite her objections. — Khul Waters

Some of us are born rebellious. Reading the story of Zelda Fitzgerald by Nancy Milford, I identified with her mutinous spirit. I remember passing shopwindows with my mother and asking why people didn't just kick them in. She explained that there were unspoken rules of social behavior, and that's the way we coexist as people. I felt instantly confined by the notion that we are born into a world where everything was mapped out by those before us. I struggled to suppress destructive impulses and worked instead on creative ones. Still, the small rule-hating self within me did not die. — Patti Smith

Sportsmanship is the ethical and moral dimension of sports. It is demonstrated by a number of attributes and attitudes such as fair play, respect for the rules and traditions of the sport and various traits of good character including integrity (abiding by the letter and spirit of the rules and concepts of honor); demonstrated respect for others including teammates, opponents, officials and spectators; accountability, self-control, and graciousness in victory and defeat. — Michael Josephson

Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest - forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries. — Hannah Arendt

People who exist at the margins of society are very much like Alice in Wonderland. They are not required to make the tough decision to risk their lives by embarking on an adventure of self-discovery. They have already been thrust beyond the city's walls that keep ordinary people at a safe distance from the unknown. For at least some outsiders, "alienation" has destroyed traditional presumptions of identity and opened up the mythic hero's path to the possibility of discovery. What outsiders discover in their adventures on the other side of the looking glass is the courage to repudiate self-contempt and recognise their "alienation" as a precious gift of freedom from arbitrary norms that they did not make and did not sanction. At the moment a person questions the validity of the rules, the victim is no longer a victim. — Jamake Highwater

Are you repeating someone else's narrative, taking it for granted? Talk therapy sessions and 12-step recovery shares help develop the ability to present a coherent life narrative through the safe structure of clear rules of communication that support healthy self-expression and self-awareness. — Alexandra Katehakis

I've been arrested - spent time in lockup with genuinely dangerous guys. I've been in street fights without rules where no one was coming to break it up - and I've won. I've conquered the insurmountable challenge of earning a law degree and dealing with the self-centered jackasses who are my clients without committing aggravated assault. It's a diaper. How hard could it be? I — Emma Chase

Rather than experiencing the richness of a dynamic, intimate relationship with the righteous One, you put God in a little box that you can check off your to-do list each week. By settling for rules and religion and feeling pretty good about how much you're doing for the church and those less fortunate, you become blinded to legalism and self-righteousness. — Craig Groeschel

Urging humans to be superhumans, on pain of death and torture, is the urging of terrible self-abasement at their repeated and inevitable failure to keep the rules. — Christopher Hitchens

Far from helping students to develop into mature, self-reliant, self-motivated individuals, schools seem to do everything they can to keep youngsters in a state of chronic, almost infantile, dependency. The pervasive atmosphere of distrust, together with rules covering the most minute aspects of existence, teach students every day that they are not people of worth, and certainly not individuals capable of regulating their own behavior. — Alfie Kohn

The process of discovering your greatest self is of refinement, not adding. The best way to reconnect with your freedom is to look at the rules you have that govern and hinder it. — Steve Maraboli

In an unforgiving world, chaos rules. — Stephen Richards

Alert to the manipulations and machinations of Pharisaical self-righteousness, ragamuffins refuse to surrender control of their lives to rules and regulations. They see that the stale religiosity of legalists, trapped in the fatal narcissism of spiritual perfectionism, obscures the face of the God of Jesus. — Brennan Manning

Before games are played in common, no rules in the proper sense can come into existence. Regularities and ritualized schemas are already there, but these rites, being the work of the individual, cannot call forth that submission to something superior to the self which characterizes the appearance of any rule. — Jean Piaget

Washington had performed his role to perfection. It was no enough that a leader look the part; by Washington's rules, he must know how to act it with self-command and precision. — David McCullough

Both friend and enemy reside within us. One lives by the rule of compassion, the other by the rule of hard knocks. Though potential influence of either extreme is inevitable, our actions bear witness to the one we embrace. — T.F. Hodge

How can even the idea of rebellion against corporate culture stay meaningful when Chrysler Inc. advertises trucks by invoking "The Dodge Rebellion"? How is one to be bona fide iconoclast when Burger King sells onion rings with "Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules"? How can an Image-Fiction writer hope to make people more critical of televisual culture by parodying television as a self-serving commercial enterprise when Pepsi and Subaru and FedEx parodies of self-serving commercials are already doing big business? It's almost a history lesson: I'm starting to see just why turn-of-the-century Americans' biggest fear was of anarchist and anarchy. For if anarchy actually wins, if rulelessness become the rule, then protest and change become not just impossible but incoherent. It'd be like casting a ballot for Stalin: you are voting for an end to all voting. — David Foster Wallace

Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and preactice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving. — Bell Hooks

Rules, laws and codes become obsolete among the self-governed. — T.F. Hodge

God only rules in the affairs of men either by the invitation of man or to save man from some self-inflicted dangers. — Sunday Adelaja

Our shame seems to come from what we do with the negative messages, negative affirmations, beliefs and rules that we hear as we grow up. We hear these from our parents, parent figures and other people in authority, such as teachers and clergy. These messages basically tell us that we are somehow not all right, not okay. That our feelings, our needs, our True Self, our Child Within is not acceptable. — Charles L. Whitfield

I do understand what love is, and that is one of the reasons I can never again be a Christian. Love is not self denial. Love is not blood and suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity. Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your ego or disobeyed your rules. Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being. — Dan Barker

I don't have the self-discipline for diets; I break rules I set for myself, so I try and eat more healthily, juice more, and avoid sugar. — Sally Phillips

And sometimes, love is unconventional and it breaks all the rules and blurs all the lines and basks in its glory, shining as bright as the sun, unapologetically glowing even under the narrowed stares of society and its screaming, self-righteous morals, berating and judging that which it doesn't understand. — Madeline Sheehan

Women are no longer required to be chaste or modest, to restrict their sphere of activity to the home, or even to realize their properly feminine destiny in maternity. Normative femininity [that is, the rules for being a good woman] is coming more and more to be centered on women's body - not its duties and obligations or even its capacity to bear children, but its sexuality, more precisely, its presumed heterosexuality and its appearance. . . . The woman who checks her makeup half a dozen times a day to see if her foundation has caked or her mascara has run, who worries that the wind or the rain may spoil her hairdo, who looks frequently to see if her stockings have bagged at the ankle, or who, feeling
fat, monitors everything she eats, has become, just as surely as the inmate
of Panopticon, a self-policing subject, a self committed to a relentless self-surveillance. This self-surveillance is a form of obedience
to patriarchy. — Rosemarie Tong

The human soul is a divine non-substance. A spirit that permeates our flesh, dwells in our conscious, and rules our subconscious self. It makes us cling to life even when we no longer want to embrace it. It makes us hope in the most desperate of circumstances. It gives our dream shape, our inspiration form, our love its timeless beauty. From The Cartesian Machine — Nick Tran

In today's society, people use those qualities - I call them qualities - for all things. It is for self-gratification. It is for sex. It is for excitment. This kind of fervor servers it's own purpose. It doesn't obey rules. It runs amok. You see it on the news everyday, but society cannot hang it's moral and ethical values on me to survive. i do what I must in all ways, and I'm proud of it. The necessity to be myself passes all moral barriers. — Richard Ramirez

If anybody studying psychology wants a concrete example of what a narcissist looks like, I advise them to consider any man who cheats on his wife. These guys are the textbook me-firsters, the ones who think the rules don't apply to them, the ones who tell themselves as long as she doesn't know, there's no harm done. No woman needs to sleep with these guys. There are so many single self-absorbed narcissists who will fuck you poorly. — Julie Klausner

Not aware of any boundaries or any rules or any traditions abiding upon them, the water flows free and wild.
Not bothered about anything gone or left behind she eagerly rushes to the new dimension of her life knowing the best is yet to come.

Learn to be like that soul clean, compassionate, loving and strong enough to endure. — Harshada Pathare

Even in the Stone Age, the rules for how to win friends and influence people were likely the same as today's: Cooperate when your neighbor needs shelter, share your dinner even if you're still hungry, and think twice before saying "That loincloth makes you look fat." In other words, a little self-control, please. — Kelly McGonigal

Neither son loved the father for himself. They both were using the father for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying, and serving him for his own sake. This means that you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently. It's a shocking message: Careful obedience to God's law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God. — Timothy Keller

Decades of research has shown that play is crucial to physical, intellectual, and social-emotiona l development at all ages. This is especially true of the purest form of play: the unstructured, self-motivated, imaginative, independent kind, where children initiate their own games and even invent their own rules. — David Elkind

It is easy to be a slave to the letter, and difficult to enter into the spirit; easy to obey a number of outward rules, difficult to enter intelligently and self-sacrificingly into the will of God. — Frederic Farrar

If there is a lesson in our story it is that the manipulation, according to strictly self-consistent rules, of a set of symbols representing one single aspect of the phenomena may produce correct, verifiable predictions, and yet completely ignore all other aspects whose ensemble constitutes reality ... — Arthur Koestler

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

The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle. — Brennan Manning

Of course it isn't. It's just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or - what's that strange thing you British play?" "Er, cricket? Self-loathing?" "Parliamentary democracy. — Douglas Adams

Do you realize, then, what Jesus is teaching? Neither son loved the father for himself. They both were using the father for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying, and serving him for his own sake. This means that you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently. — Timothy Keller

I refuse to follow the rules where society tries to control people with low self esteem. — Kanye West

It also strikes me that male-to-male bonding can create a gender role conflict, as it challenges the myth of full independence. Heroism is an exception. In fact, heroism has a long tradition as part of manhood. Bonds formed through natural disaster or war are exceptions to the typical "self-reliance" rules. These are op-portunities for men to experience a type of connection with each other that is ordinarily prohibited by the "rules" of manhood. — Mary Crocker Cook

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

Taken as a whole, Europe's share of world output is projected to fall by almost a third in the next two decades. This is the competitiveness challenge - and much of our weakness in meeting it is self-inflicted. Complex rules restricting our labour markets are not some naturally occurring phenomenon. — David Cameron

The Bible isn't an answer book. It isn't a self-help manual. It isn't a flat, perspicuous list of rules and regulations that we can interpret objectively and apply unilaterally to our lives. The Bible is a sacred collection of letters and laws, poetry and proverbs, philosophy and prophecies, written and assembled over thousands of years in cultures and contexts very different from our own, that tells the complex, ever-unfolding story of God's interaction with humanity. — Rachel Held Evans

The way the world works now, the way the rules of engagement operate, you can't claim to make sense out of the exterior without booking voyages into the interior. Think about it: How can you understand 'it' if you haven't made any effort to understand 'you'? Because what you're really doing is establishing a living, electrical, vital, energetic connection between it and you. You're creating both of them, simultaneously. A lot like quantum physics. — Seth Godin

Everybody is bound by some social rules. But I think that artists need some kind of freedom to explore their minds and that some of them tend to take that freedom to live a little more openly or a little more dangerously, sometimes a lot more self-destructively, than other people. — Anne Roiphe

The nature of men and of organized society dictates the maintenance in every field of action of the highest and purest standards of justice and of right dealing ... By justice the lawyer generally means the prompt, fair, and open application of impartial rules; but we call ours a Christian civilization, and a Christian conception of justice must be much higher. It must include sympathy and helpfulness and a willingness to forego self-interest in order to promote the welfare, happiness, and contentment of others and of the community as a whole. — Woodrow Wilson

That's what I've never been able to get about religion: that charmless combination of altruism and insanity. Give me a cynical, self-interested bastard any day of the week; at least you can play chicken with him and know he'll stick to the rules. — Mike Carey

You never know what forms self-respect will take, especially with people whose rules of life are few. — Saul Bellow

I am not against rules, but the rules should arise out of your understanding. They should not be imposed from the outside. I am not against discipline! but discipline should not be slavery. All true discipline is self-discipline. And self-discipline is never against freedom - in fact, it is the ladder to freedom. Only disciplined people become free, but their discipline is not obedience to others: their discipline is obedience to their own inner voice. And they are ready to risk anything for it. Let your own awareness decide your lifestyle, life pattern. Don't allow anybody else to decide it. That is a sin, to allow anybody else to decide it. Why is it a sin? Because you will never be in your life. It will remain superficial, it will be hypocrisy. — Osho

On this upward and sometimes hazardous journey, each of us meets our share of daily challenges. If we are not careful, as we peer through the narrow lens of self-interest, we may feel that life is bringing us more than our fair share of trials
that somehow others seem to be getting off more lightly.
But the tests of life are tailored for our own best interests, and all will face the burdens best suited to their own mortal experience. In the end we will realize that God is merciful as well as just and that all the rules are fair. We can be reassured that our challenges will be the ones we needed, and conquering them will bring blessings we could have received in no other way. — Jeffrey R. Holland

This is the humbling truth that lies at the heart of Christianity. We love to be our own saviors. Our hearts love to manufacture glory for themselves. So we find messages of self-salvation extremely attractive, whether they are religious (Keep these rules and you earn eternal blessing) or secular (Grab hold of these things and you'll experience blessing now). — Timothy Keller

One of Eric's most basic rules is sort of a golden rule for management: Make sure you would work for yourself. If you are so bad as a manager that you as a worker would hate working for you, then you have some work to do. The best tool we have found for this is the self-review: At least once per year, write a review of your own performance, then read it and see if you would work for you. And then, share it with the people who do in fact work for you. This will elicit greater insights than the standard 360-degree review process, because when you are initiating criticism of yourself it gives others the freedom to be more honest. — Eric Schmidt

Money cannot save you from tragedy, or give you control in a chaotic world. Only God can do that. What breaks the power of money over us is not just redoubled effort to follow the example of Christ. Rather, it is deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ, what you have in him, and then living out the changes that that understanding makes in your heart - the seat of your mind, will, and emotions. Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding and identity, our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without a complete change of heart will be superficial and fleeting. — Timothy Keller