Self Well Quotes & Sayings

Syn pulled Furi to his chest. "Furi, I want you to go back through the bar and go wait at my place. I'm going to have a little chat with your ex-husband," Syn said extra loudly.

Furi huffed in annoyance, "Syn, I took six months of self-defense courses at the YMCA this year. I can fight for myself."

Syn looked at Furi like he'd lost his damn mind. "At the Y? Well hell, that's great Furious. If you ever get jumped by the Village People, feel free to pull out those moves. As for now, I want you to take your karate-kicking-YMCA-going-ass back to my apartment," Syn snarled at Furi, urging him toward the door, having neither the time nor the patience to argue with his ridiculous pride. Thankfully, with one final glare Furi went back into the pub. When Syn turned back, God and Day were looking back and forth between him and his two foes.


"What's going on here, fellas?" God asked casually, not acknowledging Syn. — A.E. Via

I'm not talking about the blood ecstasy. I'm talking about my being able to fill that emotion void she has. You know her as well as I do, maybe better. She aches with it. She needs to be accepted for who she is so badly. And I was able to do that. Do you know good that felt? To be able to show someone that, yes, you are someone worth sacrificing for? That you like them for their faults and that you respect them for their ability to rise above them? — Kim Harrison

His skin was a pretty colour, it made me jealous.
Jacob noticed my scrutiny.
What?" he asked, suddenly self-conscious.
"Nothing. I just hadn't realised before. Did you know, you're sort of beautiful?"
Once the words slipped out, I worried that he might take my implusive observation the wrong way.
But Jacob rolled his eyes. "You hit your head pretty hard, didn't you?"
"I'm serious."
Well, then, thanks. Sort of."
I grinned. "You're sort of welcome. — Stephenie Meyer

If what you achieve today is equal to what you achieved yesterday, then you are at a loss. And if what you have achieved today is less than what you achieved yesterday, then you are deprived from the Almighty's blessings. Anyone who is not progressing, is in fact regressing, and if you are regressing, then you might as well be dead. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

But what many psychologists have done, probably because they did well on a test themselves and everyone wants high self esteem, is to create this little box and then do their research inside it. — Robert Sternberg

We all practice self-deception to a degree; no man can handle complete honesty without being cut at each turn. There's not enough room in a man's head for sanity alongside each grief, each worry, each terror that he owns. I'm well used to burying such things in a dark cellar and moving on. — Mark Lawrence

If, while observing the boundless universe, the writer is able to scrutinise his own self as well as others, the resulting incisiveness of his observations will far surpass objective descriptions of reality. — Gao Xingjian

If you always try to measure yourself with
money ... well, it's like counting backwards, the more you
keep on, the less you'll have to show for it. — Steven J. Carroll

GNP is therefore in a certain sense a value-neutral quantity: a measure of activity, not of activity of any kind of value. A first argument against continued growth is just this. The GNP does not give any guarantee of meaningfulness of that which is created. Growth in GNP does not imply any growth in access to intrinsic values and progress along the course of self-realization. Obviously any kind of economic growth which is not related to intrinsic values is neutral or detrimental. The measure of GNP is somehow related to the fierceness of activity in the society but this fierceness may very well have more to do with a lack of ability of the members of the society to engage in meaningful activity than a measure of something humanity should look upon with joy. There is no clear relation to life quality. — Arne Naess

The very way that you think is a crucial component to your overall health and well being. Living towards the negative will only foster conflict and a sense of lack, while living towards the positive will create more opportunity for you to experience harmony and abundance. — Gary Hopkins

You don't have to be like anyone else. You just need to learn more about your own creative self and start blooming. — Deborah Day

It makes me sick, the way sadness is addicting. The way I can't stop. Sadness is familiar. It's comfortable and it's easy in a sense that it comes naturally to me. But everything else about it is hard. The way my body aches with self-hatred. The way my mind spins and spins with hopeless thoughts. The way it poisons everything I do, every relationship I have. Yet it's addicting, because I know sadness, and I know it very well. And there's a sort of comfort in that, like being home after a trip or sleeping in your own bed after being away. There's just a sense that this is where I belong. This is how it's supposed to be. — Marianna Paige

As Mr. R. U. Sayee has well said: 'It should be clear a priori that fairy lore must have developed as a result of modifications and accretions received in different countries and at many periods, though we must not overlook the part played by tradition in providing a mould that to some extent determines the nature of later additions.' It must also be self-evident that a great deal of confusion has been caused by the assumption that some spirit-types were fairies which in a more definite sense are certainly not of elfin provenance. In some epochs, indeed, Faerie appears to have been regarded as a species of limbo to which all 'pagan' spirits - to say nothing of defeated gods, monsters, and demons - could be banished, along with the personnel of Olympus and the rout of witchcraft. Such types, however, are usually fairly easy of detection. — Lewis Spence

The appearance of mediocrity is often useful in life because it weakens tautly strung strings and sobers up people's self-confident or self-forgetful feelings, reminding them how close they are to mediocrity as well. — Ivan Turgenev

I looked at the door, at war with myself. On the one hand, I hated going anything Reth wanted me to. On the other hand, there was a mop with my name on it inside.
"Fine, but if you try anything-"
"Really, Evelyn,how I've missed your charming company."
Keeping a wary eye on the faerie, I followed hi, through the alley. We made our way down the lamp-lined street, his step so light it bordered on dancing. I felt like a graceless clod next to him. Then there was the aspect of his ethereal, near-angelic beauty compared to my..well, for the sake of my self-esteem, it was probably best not to compete. — Kiersten White

Sometimes I think that wisdoms slip from my mind like drool from the lips of an idiot ...
Where's all this stuff coming from? Is it any good? Any good in, you know, the wisdom sense? Who am I to spout this stuff anyway?
Well, here's the thing. You too can find yourself shedding wisdom like cat hair if you only allow yourself the liberty of introspection.
Think about what you alone know that no one else does. That one neat wonderful profound insight. It is fully yours. No one else on this planet of about six billion people understands it like you do.
Now, see if you can share it with someone. Bestow it, a gift of yourself.
Wisdom is like gossip. Except it's the good kind. — Vera Nazarian

Is this narcissism? Solipsism? Idiocy (from the Greek word idios, for self)? Would Turing acknowledge it as a proof of human behavior? Well, perhaps. They drove Turing to suicide too. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Perhaps the most important insight of all with regard to success is that to achieve greatly, you must become a different person. It is not the material things you accomplish or acquire that matter so much as it is the quality of the person you must become to accomplish well above the average. The development of self-discipline is the high road that makes everything possible for you. — Brian Tracy

My commitment to the security and future of Israel is based upon basic morality as well as enlightened self-interest. Our role in supporting Israel honors our own heritage. — Gerald R. Ford

The purpose of ritual is to change the mind of the human being. It's a sacred drama in which you are the audience as well as the participant, and the purpose of it is to activate the parts of the mind that are not activated by everyday activity ... 'Magic' becomes the development of techniques that allow communication with hidden portions of the self, and with hidden portions of all other islands in this 'psychic sea.' — Margot Adler

There are times in every person's life when they feel lonely, isolated, like maybe they don't belong. For adoptees, this is often exacerbated by the circumstances. Because you were given up, you have a built-in scapegoat; you can blame everything that you feel on the fact that you were adopted. But, I want you to know that this is a fallacy. Finding your biological parents will not fill in the void that you feel. You will get answers to your questions, but no one can fill in the missing pieces except for you. Before you go on a search, take the time to get to know yourself very well. Heal the hurts you've experienced. Acknowledge the past and how it has affected you. Become a whole person who is seeking roots, not a damaged person who is seeking fulfillment. — Janet Louise Stephenson

The self-deception of slave owners and proponents of slavery is well documented by the historians Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese in their book Fatal Self-Deception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South. Slavery was not perceived by most slaveholders in the nineteenth century to be an exploitation of humans by other humans for economic gain; instead, slaveholders painted a portrait of slavery as a paternalistic and benign institution in which the slaves themselves were seen as not so different from all laborers - black and white - who toiled everywhere in both free and slave states; further, the South's "Christian slavery" was claimed to be superior. — Michael Shermer

The individual and social instincts, - the one a most potent factor for individual endeavor, for growth, aspiration, self-realization; the other an equally potent factor for mutual helpfulness and social well-being. — Emma Goldman

The articles were extremely eye-opening. Not just in Teen Vogue but in Seventeen and CosmoGirl as well. They were all about being yourself, staying natural, loving your body as is, and going green! The messages were the exact opposite of Vik and Viv's.
Hmmmmm.
Frankie turned to face the full-length mirror that was up against the yellow wardrobe. She opened her robe and examined her body. Fit, muscular, and exquisitely proportioned, she agreed with the magazines. So what if her skin was mint? Or her limbs were attached with seams? According to the magazines, which were - no offense! - way more in touch with the times than her parents were, she was suppose to love her body just the way it was. And she did! Therefor if the normies read magazines (which obviously they did, because they were in them), then they would love her, too. Natural was in.
Besides she was Daddy's perfect little girl. And who didn't love perfect? — Lisi Harrison

Lincoln received one more painful reminder that he was still a target for criticism. Walking between his home and office, he noticed a group of young boys teasing an agitated stray goat. When the animal hungrily spied the taller target, it turned from the children and tried butting Lincoln instead, until he was forced to seize it by the horns in self-defense. As the youngsters watched in delight, the president-elect of the United States gave his first post-election speech - to an angry goat. He might as well have been speaking to the South when he shouted: "I didn't bother you. It was the boys. Why don't you go and butt the boys. I wouldn't trouble you. — Harold Holzer

Let's say that he should go out and hang himself because he finds that writing well is impossibly difficult. Then he should be cut down without mercy and forced by his own self to write as well as he can for the rest of his life. At least he will have the story of the hanging to commence with. — Ernest Hemingway,

You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet. — John D. MacDonald

Well, people are like that too. THey create a false door - to deceive. If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority - and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves. They think, and everybody thinks, that they are like that. But behind that door, Renisenb, is bare rock... And so when reality comes and touches them with the feather of truth - their true self reasserts itself. — Agatha Christie

Nothing's done well when it's done out of self-interest. — Therese Of Lisieux

I am convinced that being fully committed to the moment, without any worries about the past or projections into the future, is the best attribute a closer can have. You wonder why the shelf life of so many short relievers is, well, so short? Why guys can be unhittable for a year or two and then disappear? It's because it takes a ton of concentration, and self-belief, to stay in the moment in this way and not let the highs and lows mess with your psyche. — Mariano Rivera

Kant comes to identify the institution of property with freedom because he sees it in a fundamental sense as an extension of the self. An object which is, he argues, my property belongs solely and exclusively to myself, and it is my right to consume or use it in whatever way I please. Indeed, so strongly does the individual feel about his ownership, Kant thinks, that if somebody takes it without his consent they harm the individual just as much as though they had injured his body. From this point of view, the individual has every justification in feeling as upset about the theft of a favourite book as he has about a bruised knee. To threaten the individual's property, in the sense of its being an extension of the self, prejudices not only his feeling of well-being but also his very existence. — Howard Williams

Conscience works less well collectively. Compared to individuals, a group is less free to self-correct its morality. It follows from this idea that the self-interested righteousness and imperialism of a nation, driven by cabals of power, are even more pronounced than the same tendencies in individuals. — Richard Crouter

It's very easy in a way, horrible in some ways, but simply to give up the whole thing, to say, "Well, the hell with it, as far as I'm concerned life is pointless and [so] live the fullest, most successfully self-fulfilling life you can and let the rest go hang" - I've never reached that point in my life. — Frederick Buechner

Self-love exaggerates our faults as well as our virtues. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Tom was anxious about whether he could keep his job at the hospital or would have to go on relief, he exclaimed, "If I could not support my family, I'd as soon jump off the dock." That is, if the value of being a self-respecting wage-earner were threatened, Tom, like the salesman Willie Loman and countless other men in our society, would feel he no longer existed as a self, and might as well be dead. — Rollo May

Fiction is a web of lies that attempts to entangle the truth. And autobiography may well be the reverse: data tricked up and rearranged to invent a fictive self. — Nicholas Delbanco

We commonly confuse love with the strong emotions most often associated with it, such as joy, attachment, lust, infatuation, pleasure, pain, fear, and hope, to name a few. But, love is not a feeling; love itself is an action. There are countless emotions and beliefs that can cause us to love. Love is the willing giving of self to another living being. Love is giving the life, time, energy, and resources that we would normally give or use for our self to someone else. Love is an action that enhances the well-being of another living being. — C W Newman

He nodded. "Okay. We got it out in the open. Here it is. This is your moment to be angry at your own laziness and wallow in self-pity. A moment is all you get, because any minute Adam Pierce might set Houston on fire. Take a few minutes for your pity party. Would five be enough?"
"You're an asshole."
"Yes, but I'm a very well-trained asshole. I'm offering you the use of my expertise. So suck it up, get over this bump, and let's go. Are you with me?"
You know what? No: if he ever fell in love, it wouldn't be great romantic devotion. It would be an exercise in frustration and lust, and at the end of it his significant other would strangle him. — Ilona Andrews

The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anarchism, to me, means not only the denial of authority, not only a new economy, but a revision of the principles of morality. It means the development of the individual as well as the assertion of the individual. It means self-responsibility, and not leader worship. — Voltairine De Cleyre

In the course of aesthetic experience, the perceiver may be overwhelmed by this 'mere object', overcome with emotion, altered to the very roots of his being.[ ... ] The experience of beauty involves an exchange of power, and as such, it is often disorienting, a mix of humility and exaltation, subjugation and liberation, awe and mystified pleasure.[ ... ] Many people, fearing a pleasure they cannot control, have vilified beauty as a siren or a whore. Since at one time or another though, everyone answers to 'her' call, it would be well if we could recognize the meaning of our succumbing as a valuable response, an opportunity for self-revelation rather than defeat.[ ... ] It entails a flexibility and empathy toward 'Others' in general and the capacity to see ourselves as both active and passive without fearing that we will be diminished in the process. — Wendy Steiner

If writing is the ultimate act of self-pleasure, then mine certainly qualifies as masturbatory.
Still, if you gave me a box of pens and a box of tissues, and then locked me in a room with nothing else but skin mags and blank notebooks, I'd be lying if I told you I'd run out of pens before tissues.
The nice thing about writing is that you actually get to share it with other people when you're done, which usually doesn't go over so well with spent bodily fluids, but ideally you don't want readers walking away from your book with the sneaking suspicion that they've just spent hours of their precious lives watching you masturbate.
Unless of course it's that type of publication. — Arthur Graham

It's well-documented that stress and low self-confidence are detrimental to productivity, especially on tasks requiring creative thinking. Maintaining a healthy exercise routine saves time, creativity, and energy in the long run. — Timur Zhiyentayev

Therefore, for me, living true to my self may be defined as: Making the daily choices in all areas of my life that are in the best interests of my survival, evolution and prosperity, that aid the ongoing achievement of the highest physical, mental and spiritual objectives of which I am capable, that are based on the most correct assessment of reality I have available, and that honor the evolving truth of who I am and who I choose to be, all in the personal pursuit of freedom, function, fun, as well as the highest good of all. — Walt F.J. Goodridge

The crowd, in fact, is composed of individuals; it must therefore be in every man's power to become what he is, an individual. From becoming an individual no one, no one at all, is excluded, except he who excludes himself by becoming a crowd. To become a crowd, to collect a crowd about one, is on the contrary to affirm the distinctions of human life. The most well-meaning person who talks about these distinctions can easily offend an individual. But then it is not the crowd which possesses power, influence, repute, and mastery over men, but it is the invidious distinctions of human life which despotically ignore the single individual as the weak and impotent, which in a temporal and worldly interest ignore the eternal truth- the single individual. — Soren Kierkegaard

Angry obsessive thoughts about another weaken your state of mind and well being. If you must have revenge, then take it by choosing to be happy and let them go forever. — Gary Hopkins

I think that it's always appropriate for Americans and for American foreign policy to make clear why we feel that self-government is most compatible with peace, the well-being of people, and human dignity. — Jeane Kirkpatrick

Every policy is shaped by two forces: background analysis and foreground politics. The political forces are loud, self-serving and, in the case of energy policy, well known. — Donella Meadows

He became another data point in the American experiment of self-government, an experiment statistically skewed from the outset, because it wasn't the people with sociable genes who fled the crowded Old World for the new continent; it was the people who didn't get along well with others. — Jonathan Franzen

While criticism or fear of punishment may restrain us from doing wrong, it does not make us wish to do right. Disregarding this simple fact is the great error into which parents and educators fall when they rely on these negative means of correction. The only effective discipline is self-discipline, motivated by the inner desire to act meritoriously in order to do well in one's own eyes, according to one's own values, so that one may feel good about oneself may have a good conscience. — Bruno Bettelheim

The goal for most people should not be to feel better, but to get better at feeling. — Shannon L. Alder

If we want to awaken, we don't need to eradicate the ego, we simply need to be conscious of the deeper self as well. — Timothy Freke

Commercial agriculture can survive within pluralistic American society, as we know it - if the farm is rebuilt on some of the values with which it is popularly associated: conservation, independence, self-reliance, family, and community. To sustain itself, commercial agriculture will have to reorganize its social and economic structure as well as its technological base and production methods in a way that reinforces these values. — Marty Strange

Worrisome thoughts and their resulting feelings are a form of self strangulation. They not only strangle your emotions. They affect your physical life as well, and your ability to focus and get things done. — Andrew J. Bernstein

Following of authority in any form, whether self-imposed or established from outside, as well as any form of imitation, copying, is destructive of incentive, of creativeness, and that it blocks the discovery of what is true. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

People who take books on sex to bed become frigid. You get self-conscious. You can't think a story. You can't think, "I shall do a story to improve mankind." Well, it's nonsense. All the great stories, all the really worthwhile plays, are emotional experiences. If you have to ask yourself whether or not you love a girl or you love a boy, forget it. You don't. A story is the same way. You either feel a story and need to write it, or you better not write it. — Ray Bradbury

Noone has yet succeeded in inventing a philosophy at once credible and self-consistent. Locke aimed at credibility, and achieved it at the expense of consistency. Most of the great philosophers have done the opposite. A philosophy which is not self-consistent cannot be wholly true, but a philosophy which is self-consistent can very well be wholly false. The most fruitful philosophies have contained glaring inconsistencies, but for that very reason have been partially true. There is no reason to suppose that a self-consistent system contains more truth than one which, like Locke's, is more or less wrong. — Bertrand Russell

Well, that's it." I said after we had waited for another five minutes and found ourselves still in a state of pleasantly welcome existence. "The ChronoGuard has shut itself down and time travel is as it should be: technically, logically, and theoretically ... impossible." "Good thing, too," reply Landon. "It always made my head ache. In fact, I was thinking of doing self help book for science-fiction novelists eager to write about time travel. It would consist of a single word: Don't. — Jasper Fforde

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself. — Napoleon Bonaparte

I God, a very Gomorry on wheels! You lead the most exciting life I know of, and complain more about it than any two well-off bastards in the running. I am glad to hear you sound like your old self, though I never hearn of no Jonathan with two Davids.
Top of this letter is an allusion to that wonderful novel, The SotWeed Factor, in which Ebenezer Cooke, "poet and virgin," is about to be raped by a buncher sailors (they have him tied across a table in the fo'c'sle; he is saved by a raiding party of pirates, one of whom strides into the scene and says, "I God, this here ship's a very floatin' Gomorry!"
Have come down with the flu since inditing the above. [ ... ]. The mail yestiddy brought a letter from Sam Beckett! asked to see Sappho and Arky. I sag with fatigue. Blessings.
Guy — Guy Davenport

Nothing is so tiresome to one's self, as well as so odious to others, as disguise and affectation. — Benjamin Franklin

The basic idea behind self-signaling is that despite what we tend to think, we don't have a very clear notion of who we are. We generally believe that we have a privileged view of our own preferences and character, but in reality we don't know ourselves that well (and definitely not as well as we think we do). Instead, we observe ourselves in the same way we observe and judge the actions of other people - inferring who we are and what we like from our actions. For — Dan Ariely

If we must lose wife or husband when we live to our highest right, we lose an unhappy marriage as well, and we gain ourselves. But if a marriage is born between two already self-discovered, what a lovely adventure begins, hurricanes and all. — Richard Bach

I always feel that I am a traveler, going somewhere and to some destination.
If I tell myself that the somewhere and the destination do not exist, that seems to me very likely and reasonable enough.
The brothel keeper, when he kicks anyone out, has similar logic, argues it well, and is always right, I know. So at the end of the course I shall find my mistake. Be it so. I shall find then that not only the Arts, but everything else as well, were only dreams, that one's self was nothing at all. — Vincent Van Gogh

Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance - nothing more," says the twentieth-century philosopher-essayist Walter Benjamin. "But to lose oneself in a city - as one loses oneself in a forest - that calls for quite a different schooling." To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Benjamin's terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender, a psychic state achievable through geography. — Rebecca Solnit

What I love about the thriller form is that it makes you write a story. You can't get lost in your own genius, which is a dangerous place for writers. You don't want to ever get complacent. If a book starts going too well, I usually know there's a problem. I need to struggle. I need that self-doubt. I need to think it's not the best thing ever. — Harlan Coben

With the compelling convincingness of dreams, which are vague yet exact, the ghost voice draws us (to ourselves and all of our component selves), lifts them casually out of the well of the past
the well wherein nothing is lost, the deep well of forgetfulness, and remembrance
and tosses them mockingly on the glassy table surface of our consciousness. There we are forced to consider them. There we are forced to regard, analyze, and re-understand. — Heinrich Robert Zimmer

If you act for self-gain then no good can come of it. If you act selflessly, then you act well for all and you must not be afraid. — Rand Miller

Thought it has certainly taken you long enough to realize what should have truly been precious to you. Not your own self-importance, nor how clever you thought you were, but the affections of those who cared for you, and that you should have cared for in return. e become truly great only when we work for others as well as ourselves. By your own light, you can only illuminate a small part of the world, but when your light is reflected and shared, it is magnified. — Mercedes Lackey

Tolerance can be exercised only by those who have well-grounded convictions (although it will not always be exercised even by them). For such people tolerance is an act of self-abnegation; although they are convinced that those who differ from them must be wrong, they nevertheless will protect their rights. — Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can - working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!
Impatience, on the other hand, is a symptom of selfishness. It is a trait of the self-absorbed. It arises from the all too-prevalent condition called "center of the universe" syndrome, which leads people to believe that the world revolves around them and that all others are just supporting cast in the grand theater of mortality in which only they have the starring role. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

The UN should arrange, as US forces leave, for an international group of peacekeepers and negotiators from the Arab countries to bring together Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and work out a solution for self-governance that would give all three groups a share in political power. Simultaneously, the UN should arrange for shipments of food and medicine, from the United States and other countries, as well as engineers to help rebuild the country. — Howard Zinn

You can sit down with that fearful child inside and be gentle with him or her. You might say something like this: Dear little child, I am your adult self. I would like to tell you that we are no longer a baby, helpless and vulnerable. We have strong hands and strong feet; we can very well defend ourselves. So there is no reason why we have to continue to be fearful anymore. — Thich Nhat Hanh

We just may be the most well-informed, yet least self-aware, people in history. — Norman Lear

Medicine labours to restore 'natural' structure or 'normal' function. But greed, egoism, self-deception,and self-pity are not abnormal in the same sense as astigmatism or a floating kidney. For who, in Heaven's name, would describe as natural or normal any man from whom these failings were wholly absent? 'Natural,' if you like, in a quite different sense; archnatural, unfallen. We have only seen one such Man. And he was not at all like the psychologist's picture of the integrated, balanced, adjusted, happily married, employed, popular citizen. You can't really be 'well adjusted' to your world if it says 'you havea devil' and ends by nailing you up naked to a stake of wood. — C.S. Lewis

The poor man retains the prejudices of his forefathers without their faith, and their ignorance without their virtues; he has adopted the doctrine of self-interest as the rule of his actions, without understanding the science which puts it to use; and his selfishness is no less blind than was formerly his devotedness to others. If society is tranquil, it is not because it is conscious of its strength and its well-being, but because it fears its weakness and its infirmities; a single effort may cost it its life. Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure. The desires, the repinings, the sorrows, and the joys of the present time lead to no visible or permanent result, like the passions of old men, which terminate in impotence. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Christ says, Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good ... Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked
the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours. — C.S. Lewis

Possible Ending #16 (Life Imitates Art Imitates Life Imitates Art Imitates): I'd seen this movie. Obvious ending: outright betrayal, lesson learned, life is heartbreak, people who mean well still fuck you over, everyone's sad, greedy, looking out for number one, no consideration for the fragile fat boy whose displayed cynicism only masks a deeper hope that everyone's okay, will ultimately end up all right, that love exists, that happiness may not be stable but at least comes in bursts, that everything worthwhile wasn't just a self-created illusion. — Adam Wilson

This so-called animisn that not so much the Fan Nannies but everybody else around here subscribes to. can we really just write it off as primitive superstition run amok? Do only human beings have souls, or is that a narcissistic, chauvinistic piece of self-flattery? I mean, can't we look at that great old teak tree over there or at this gulch, and see as much of the divine in them as in some ol' anthropomorphic Sunday school Boom Daddy with imaginary long gray whiskers and a platinum bathrobe? Are we capable of entertaining the possibility that there may have been a holy entity in the cross as well as on it? — Tom Robbins

Grandmere says she can't get over the change in me. She says I seem taller. And you know maybe I am. She thinks it's because I'm wearing another one of Sebastiano's original creations, designed just for me,just like the dress that was supposed to make Michael see me as more than just his little sister's best friend ... except that it turned out he already did. But I know that's not it. And it isn't love, either. Well, not entirely. I'll tell you what it is: self-actualization. That and the fact that it turns out I'm really a princess, after all. I must be, because guess what? I'm living happily ever after. — Meg Cabot

I must exist in shadows, while you live under exquisitely blue skies, and yet I don't hate you for the freedom that you take for granted-although I do envy you.
I don't hate you because, after all, you are human, too, and therefore have limitations of your own. Perhaps you are homely, slow-witted or too smart for your own good, deaf or mute or blind, by nature given to despair or to self-hatred, or perhaps you are unusually fearful of Death himself. We all have burdens. On the other hand, if you are better-looking and smarter than I am, blessed with five sharp senses, even more optimistic than I am, with plenty of self-esteem, and if you also share my refusal to be humbled by the Reaper ... well, then I could almost hate you if I didn't know that, like all of us in this imperfect world, you also have a haunted heart and a mind troubled by grief, by loss, by longing. — Dean Koontz

The words you use can influence your life. Positive words are well spring of life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Finally, I applied to one of my roommates, more sagacious than the rest, for advice. Dave, I said. I'm broke and without prospects. I've blown my GI Bill on flying lessons. I can't hide out here in college much longer. What should I do?

Well, he said, at this crucial juncture you need to coldly appraise yourself. "I've only known you these few short years, but it strikes me you wouldn't be good for anything important; I'd have to say you're lazy, self-absorbed, glib and facetious, always ready to mock the suggestions of others, but never offering anything positive of your own. Intellectually shallow, no tap root anywhere, spiritually neutered, without feeling or compassion, unsteady of focus, lacking the fortitude for the long pull, with no fixed belief in anything."

I shook his hand and thanked him. The acuity of his analysis made my path clear. My only hope lay in daily journalism. — Phil Garlington

I definitely have a shareholders' perspective. I'm not doing that altruistically. I'm doing that because it's in my own self interest to do it. I think that's good for my other shareholders because they go along with me: If I do well for myself, then they do well for themselves. — Harold Simmons

Achievement of any kind is the crown of effort,the diadem of thought.By the aid of self-control, resolution, purity, righteousness, and well-directed thought a man ascends.By the aid of animality,indolence,impurity,corruption,and confusion of thought a man descends. — James Allen

Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it's supposed to feel. Their parents did extremely unloving things to them in the name of love. They came to understand love as something chaotic, dramatic, confusing, and often painful - something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for. Obviously, that's not what love is all about. Loving behaviour doesn't grind you down, keep you off balance, or create feelings of self-hatred. Love doesn't hurt, it feels good. Loving behaviour nourishes your emotional well-being. When someone is being loving to you, you feel accepted, cared for, valued, and respected. Genuine love creates feelings of warmth, pleasure, safety, stability, and inner peace. — Susan Forward

You want to hit the gym with me?"
Ellie wrinkled her button nose. "Gym? Me?"
I eyed her skinny self. "You mean you're naturally that gorgeous?"
She laughed, flushing a little. "I have good genes."
"Yeah, well I have to work-out to fit into mine. — Samantha Young

Arthur found himself staring down at the knife embedded in his foot. There was a surreal split second before the blood started to well up and then up it came, dark and thick as syrup.
Arthur looked at Jake and saw that he was staring at the knife. His expression was one of surprise, and this was something that Arthur wondered about later too. Was Jake surprised because he had never considered the possibility that he might be a less than perfect shot? Did he have that much confidence in himself, that little self-doubt?
Or was he merely surprised at how easy it was to give in to an impulse, and carry through the thought which lay in your mind? Simply to do whatever you wanted to do, and damn the consequences. — Mary Lawson

Do you know my best quality?" she asks.
"Of your many, I could not say, my darling."
"I see the best in people. I fall in love with people when I see a window into their beings, their shining moments. I've fallen in love with so many people but the trouble is I fall out of love so quickly too. I see the worst in them just as easily.
"Do you know I fell in love with you right away? That day at the Trotters' I had noted you because you were new, of course, and then you sat down at the piano, and you played a few notes, but you played them so well, with no self consciousness, and no idea that anyone might be listening. It was in that room off the garden and you were the only one there. I was passing through on the way to the ladies' room and saw you there. I fell in love with you right then, and so I slipped my drink all over myself so I could meet you." — Janice Y.K. Lee

Daniel is asleep. A care assistant, a different one today is swishingaroundthe room with a mop that smells of pine cleaner.

Elisabeth wonders what's doing to happen to all the care assistants. She realizes she hasn't so far encountered a single care assistant here who isn't from somewhere else in the world. That morning on the radio she;d heard a spokesperson say, but it's not just that we;ve been rhetorically and practically encouraging the opposite of integration for immigrants to this country. It's that we've been rhetorically and practically encouraging ourselves not to integrate. We've been doing this as a matter of self-policing since Thatcher taught us to be selfish and not just to think but to believe that there's no such thing as society.

Then the other spokesperson in the dialogue said, well, you would say that. Get over it. Grow up. Your time's over. Democracy. You lost. — Ali Smith

While I still did not know what self- actualization that sat on the top level of the pyramid meant, I could believe
that if I knew I would be able to say something positive about it as well in
my life. — Vann Chow

All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be, are longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well ... desire by itself is not wrong. It is life itself, the urge to grow in knowledge and experience. It is choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some little thing-food, sex, power, fame-will make you happy is to decieve oneself. Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy. — Nisargadatta Maharaj

But she had loved her philosopher so strongly that she had made him believe that her body was aroused and ecstatic. Ibn Rushd had been fooled. Men were easily deceived in such matters because they wanted to believe they had the power to arouse. She wanted to make him believe he pleased her. But the truth was that she could give physical pleasure to a man but not receive it, she could only imagine what such pleasure might be like, she could watch and learn, and offer up to her lover the outward signs of it, while trying to fool herself, as well as him, that yes, she was being pleasured too, which made her an actress, a phony, and a self-deceiving fool. — Salman Rushdie

At the turn of the [21st] century it was really Sergey Brin at Google who just had the thought of, well, if we give away all the information services, but we make money from advertising, we can make information free and still have capitalism. But the problem with that is it reneges on the social contract where people still participate in the formal economy. And it's a kind of capitalism that's totally self-defeating because it's so narrow. It's a winner-take-all capitalism that's not sustaining. — Jaron Lanier

Necessity demands that one should carefully examine who it is that comes to the position of spiritual authority; and coming solemnly to this point, how he should live; and living well, how he should teach; and teaching rightly, with what kind of self-examination he should learn of his own weakness. — Gregory The Great

Civility means a great deal more than just being nice to one another. It is complex and encompasses learning how to connect successfully and live well with others, developing thoughtfulness, and fostering effective self-expression and communication. Civility includes courtesy, politeness, mutual respect, fairness, good manners, as well as a matter of good health. Taking an active interest in the well-being of our community and concern for the health of our society is also involved in civility. — P. M. Forni

His name was Anderson and he had little gift for communication. Like most technicians, he had a
terror and a contempt for speculation. The inductive leap was not for him. He dug a step and pulled himself up one single step, the way a man climbs the last shoulder of a mountain. He had great contempt, born of fear, for the Hamiltons, for they all half believed they had wings - and they got some bad falls that way.
Anderson never fell, never slipped back, never flew. His steps moved slowly, slowly upward, and in the end, it is said, he found what he wanted - color film. He married Una, perhaps, because she had little humor, and this reassured him. Una wrote bleak letters without joy but also without self-pity. She was well and she hoped her family was well. — John Steinbeck

The most powerful prayer, one well-nigh omnipotent, and the worthiest work of all is the outcome of a quiet mind. The quieter it is the more powerful, the worthier, the deeper, the more telling and more perfect the prayer is. To the quiet mind all things are possible. What is a quiet mind? A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, nothing worries, which, free from ties and from all self-seeking, is wholly merged into the will of God and dead to its own. — Meister Eckhart

No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity?-an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. — Ayn Rand

The best jury of your peers that you'll ever find is ... well, you. Only you know what you're capable of and what you want to be. — Richelle Mead