Self Willed Quotes & Sayings

Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair
To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir. — William Shakespeare

Perhaps the most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self-willed journey - and to be welcomed when she comes home. — Gloria Steinem

What a wonderful sleep it had been! Never had sleep so refreshed him, so renewed him, so rejuvenated him! Perhaps he had really died, perhaps he had been drowned and was reborn in another form. No, he recognized himself, he recognized his hands and feet, the place where he lay and the Self in his breast, Siddhartha, self-willed, individualistic. But this Siddhartha was somewhat changed, renewed. He had slept wonderfully. He was remarkably awake, happy and curious. — Hermann Hesse

I believe that the struggle against death, the unconditional and self-willed determination to live, is the mode of power behind the lives and activities of all outstanding men. — Hermann Hesse

Timing is a big factor in seeing our desires met, and God's timing is perfect. Do not give up on a dream if it seems impossible or out of reach. Nothing is impossible for Yahweh! However, because man has the gift of free will and continually chooses rebellion and sin over submission, the heavenly Father may need time to align events and transform hearts. It takes time to mold self-willed lumps of clay into vessels of honor and gratitude. — Cheryl Zelenka

A peevish self-willed harlotry it is.

*She's a stubborn little brat.* — William Shakespeare

It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for three players. Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer or a child. Between twins, the spirit of the womb. Between lovers, Death. Greater numbers might drift through the drama, of course
thousands in fact
but they could only ever be phantoms, agents, or, on rare occasions, reflections of the three real and self-willed beings who stood at the center. And even this essential trio would not remain intact; or so he taught. It would steadily diminish as the story unfolded, three becoming two, two becoming one, until the stage was left deserted. — Clive Barker

Waste begets self-will; thrift begets meanness: but better be mean than self-willed. — Confucius

A self-willed man has no other aim than his own growth. — Bruce Lee

If I could look back at the seeds of faith, they were planted back then. I remember in my early teenage years - when, naturally, we become more rebellious, prideful, self-directed and self-willed - I had this nun, Sister Mary Martinella, I'll never forget her - only because of one thing that she said that stuck in my spirit. And it was a rebuke. — Patricia Mauceri

I believe nothing. Belief is intellectual surrender; "faith" a state of willed self-delusion. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Monsieur Lerebour was short, round and jovial, with the joviality of a shopkeeper who liked to do himself well. His wife, who was thin, self-willed and perpetually discontented, had still not succeeded in overcoming her husband's good humour. — Guy De Maupassant

God grant ... that he may learn to understand in time, that whoso is minded to do as he himself wills will soon enough see the day when he will find he has done that which he had never willed. — Sigrid Undset

To Michael Soule's three C's-cores, carnivores, and corridors-Foreman added "three W's: wilderness, wildways, and my favorite word in the English language, wildeor, which is Middle English and means 'self-willed animal.' The ancient people who saw animals as self-willed and the land as self-willed had respect for the earth. — Mary Ellen Hannibal

Being strong-willed is not enough, however. You also have to be hard on yourself. Someone who was strong-willed but self-indulgent would not be called determined. Determination implies your willfulness is balanced by discipline. — Paul Graham

Gatsby's self-willed metamorphosis from farm boy to prince is many ways identical to my father's. Like Gatsby, my father fueled this transformation with the "colossal vitality of his illusion". Unlike Gatsby he did this on a school teacher's salary. — Alison Bechdel

If you have given up something many times over then you are strong-willed in having done it so many times over! — Stephen Richards

To be a heroine is to be outgoing and strong willed — Sunday Adelaja

The knife hit deep, suddenly: "Jean Louise, your brother worried about your thoughtlessness until the day he died!" It was raining softly on his grave now, in the hot evening. You never said it, you never even thought it; if you'd thought it you'd have said it. You were like that. Rest well, Jem. She rubbed salt into it: I'm thoughtless, all right. Selfish, self-willed, I eat too much, and I feel like the Book of Common Prayer. Lord forgive me for not doing what I should have done and for doing what I shouldn't have done - oh hell. — Harper Lee

The whole dear notion of one's own Self-marvelous old free-willed, free- enterprising, autonomous, independent, isolated island of a Self- is a myth. — Lewis Thomas

If the demand for self-knowledge is willed by fate and is refused, this negative attitude may end in real death. The demand would not have come to this person had he still been able to strike out on some promising by-path. But he is caught in a blind alley from which only self-knowledge can extricate him. If he refuses this then no other way is left open to him. Usually he is not conscious of his situation, either, and the more unconscious he is the more he is at the mercy of unforeseen dangers: he cannot get out of the way of a car quickly enough, in climbing a mountain he misses his foothold somewhere, out skiing he thinks he can negotiate a tricky slope, and in an illness he suddenly loses the courage to live. The unconscious has a thousand ways of snuffing out a meaningless existence with surprising swiftness. — C. G. Jung

Search well and be wise, nor believe that self-willed pride will ever be better than good counsel. — Aeschylus

But, somehow or other, it is always the young and inexperienced, who are most apt to be positive and self-willed in their opinions; and so, the young Spruce-fir, thinking neither of the lessons which Nature was teaching, nor of his own limited means of judging, stuck out his branches all round him in everybody's face, right and left, and said - "Never!" It — Mrs. Alfred Gatty

It's crucial to practice self-empathy, for trust can't be willed into existence. That didn't work when our caregivers tried to impose their will on us, and it won't work internally, either. Only when we can tap into a place of self-trust, with a reliable process of reparation for inevitable mistakes, can we build trust with another person. — Alexandra Katehakis

Physicians, though they put their patients to much pain, will not destroy their nature, but will raise it up by degrees. Surgeons will pierce and cut but not mutilate. A mother who has a sick and self-willed child will not cast it away for this reason. And shall there be more mercy in the stream than there is in the spring? Shall we think there is more mercy in ourselves than in God, who plants the feeling of mercy in us? — Richard Sibbes

But these were days of self-fulfillment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault. — Hanya Yanagihara

The spirit of meditation is the combating of self-willed thinking-it is a combat against the weight of one's feelings. — Hakuin Ekaku

Do I have to take a memo for misogynist alert?"
"God, no. I'm not that traditional. Sexism is too 2015."
"Don't bother to explain, I'm not one of those strong-willed, self-declared feminists. — Rea Lidde

You get typecast. You have to find a niche in this business. So, the roles that I got cast in were the Latina or the Italian spitfires. The woman with a passion and the woman who didn't want to listen to anyone, did everything her own way, very self-willed. — Patricia Mauceri

This work somehow awakened my dormant powers of will and I began to practice self-control. At first my resolutions faded like snow in April, but in a little while I conquered my weakness and felt a pleasure I never knew before - that of doing as I willed. — Nikola Tesla

Cats were often familiars to workers of magic because to anyone used to wrestling with self-willed, wayward, devious magic
which was what all magic was
it was rather soothing to have all the same qualities wrapped up in a small, furry, generally attractive bundle that ... might, if it were in a good mood, sit on your knee and purr. Magic never sat on anybody's knee and purred. — Robin McKinley

For I am - or I was - one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all - a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named - but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey's bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well - by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion. — James Baldwin

A self-willed man obeys a different law, the one law I, too, hold absolutely sacred the human law in himself, his own individual will. — Bruce Lee

Nations that are populated largely by immature, immoral, weak-willed, cowardly, and self-indulgent men cannot and will not long endure. These types of men include those who sire and abandon their children; who cheat on their wives; who lie, steal, and covet; who hate their countrymen; and who serve no god but money. That is the direction culture is taking today's boys. — James C. Dobson

The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts we have to be open. In order to be open we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed identity. — Thomas Merton

God
if he really exist
is good, alive, self-conscious, and governs all things according to his benevolent and holy providence; but the world shows no indications of such a benevolent and holy Providence. This earth appears to be a hell, or at best a planet condemned
a sort of purgatory: it is filled with violence, tyranny and injustice, and yet God, if he exist, is absolute sovereign, and has willed that things should be as they are!
Therefore there is no God. — William Batchelder Greene

A poor man is not disposed to quick and high resentment when he is among the rich: he is apt to yield to others, for he knows others are above him: he is not stiff and self-willed; he is patient with hard fare; he expects no other than to be despised, and takes it patiently; he does not take it heinously that he overlooked and but little regarded; he is prepared to be in a lowly place; he readily honours his superiors; he takes reproofs quietly; he readily honours others as above him; he easily yields to be taught, and does not claim much to his understanding and judgment; he is not over nice or humoursome, and has his spirit subdued to hard things; he is not assuming, nor apt to take much upon him, but it is natural for him to be subject to others. Thus it is with the humble Christian. — Jonathan Edwards

She swallowed it down and willed her heart to settle. This was an important moment. For the first time she could introduce herself how she wanted. She got to define her own self. And no one was going to stop her. "Ella," she said quietly, as if saying out loud what had been only in her head for so long would break it further. — S.T. Lynn

From the Basement tapes
Eric outdid Dylan with the apologies. To the untrained eye, he seemed sincere. The psychologists on the case found Eric less convincing. They saw a psychopath. Classic. He even pulled the stunt of self-diagnosing to dismiss it. "I wish I was a fucking sociopath so I didn't have any remorse," Eric said. "But I do."
Watching that made Dr. Fuselier angry. Remorse meant a deep desire to correct a mistake. Eric hadn't done it yet. He excused his actions several times on the tapes. Fuselier was tough to rattle, but that got to him.
"Those are the most worthless apologies I've ever heard in my life," he said. It got more ludicrous later, when Eric willed some of his stuff to two buddies, "if you guys live."
"If you live?" Fuselier repeated. "They are going to go in there and quite possibly kill their friends. If they were the least bit sorry they would not do it! — Dave Cullen

For Satan, as for Marx, religion was an impediment to the grand design of transforming humanity from a collection of free-willed, autonomous individuals into a mass of self-corralling slaves who mistake security for liberty and try to keep the cognitive dissonance to a minimum in order to function. — Michael Walsh

Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity. — William Hazlitt

A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. — James Baldwin

We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision. They are representatives of abstract forces who have reached power through surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of the past. There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers. The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident, inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push. — William S. Burroughs