Standing Up For Oneself Quotes & Sayings

Standing each by his monster, they looked at each other, and smiled — E. M. Forster

Weeks and months are needed to accustom oneself to climbing. Otherwise, much energy is lost in clinging to the rock, maintaining too sure a hold, trying not to be too stiff, and worrying. After a while a climber warms to the mountains and can accomplish with little effort those things that once took all he had, for height gradually loses its meaning. Standing on the edge of a two-thousand-meter precipice becomes no less comfortable than sitting in a wicker chair on Capri, for it is possible to acquire some of the self-possession that enables mountain goats to stand for hours on a tiny ledge above an abyss. — Mark Helprin

Too many people learn about war with no inconvenience to themselves. They read about Verdun or Stalingrad without comprehension, sitting in a comfortable armchair, with their feet beside the fire, preparing to go about their business the next day, as usual.
One should really read such accounts under compulsion, in discomfort, considering oneself fortunate not to be describing the events in a letter home, writing from a hole in the mud. One should read about war in the worst circumstances, when everything is going badly, remembering that the torments of peace are trivial, and not worth any white hairs. Nothing is really serious in the tranquility of peace; only an idiot could be really disturbed by a question of salary.
One should read about war standing up, late at night, when one is tired, as I am writing about it now, at dawn, while my asthma attack wears off. And even now, in my sleepless exhaustion, how gentle and easy peace seems! — Guy Sajer

And although she'd glibly remarked that you couldn't stand still, was this actually true or was it a hollow axiom as false and misleading as any other trite saying? Why should one not stand still? If the position in which one found oneself standing was a satisfactory and comfortable one? She felt no need, no need at all to move on from being Mma Ramotswe of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, wife that great mechanic, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. — Alexander McCall Smith

I wish I'd learned then that when you call someone's bluff you usually win: it's simply not what the other person is expecting. And swimming along in the slipstream of another's current is no way to live. — Harriet Evans

How everyone is struggling for something. Trying to keep the balance.

Struggling to find their way back. Doing the best they can with what they've been dealt. Staying in place, doing anything to keep from sinking. To keep from rising.

Until something changes. Like a day at school, a friend for lunch, someone standing up for you.

And the choice to feel. Standing before you.

Realizing what part is yours. What you can and can't do. Who you are. Who you are meant to be.

More than the sum of all your broken parts. — Ash Parsons

If people keep stepping on you, wear a pointy hat. — Joyce Rachelle

The more one concentrates on breathing, the more the external stimuli fade into the background ... In due course one even grows immune to larger stimuli, and at the same time detachment from them becomes easier and quicker. Care has only to be taken that the body is relaxed whether standing, sitting or lying, and if one then concentrates on breathing one soon feels oneself shut in by impermeable layers of silence. One only knows and feels that one breathes. And, to detach oneself from this feeling and knowing, no fresh decision is required, for the breathing slows down of its own accord, becomes more and more economical in the use of breath, and finally, slipping by degrees into a blurred monotone, escapes one's attention altogether. — Eugen Herrigel

You don't cry when someone pushes you down. You get up. You get up and you fight back. And pretty soon nobody's going to shove you anymore because they'll see it's not worth it. — Morgan Rhodes

I'm always afraid of hurting someone. But if I never tell them anything, I hurt myself more. — Lisa M. Cronkhite

She had some hidden reason of her own for attaching great importance to this choosing what her mother was to wear. What was the reason, Mrs. Ramsay wondered, standing still to let her clasp the necklace she had chosen, divining, through her own past, some deep, some buried, some quite speechless feeling that one had for one's mother at Rose's age. Like all feelings felt for oneself, Mrs. Ramsay thought, it made one sad. It was so inadequate, what one could give in return; and what Rose felt was quite out of proportion to anything she actually was. And Rose would grow up; and Rose would suffer, she supposed, with these deep feelings, and she said she was ready now ... — Virginia Woolf

By not standing up for themselves when it is appropriate, many [survivors] damage their self-esteem. They become angry and ashamed of themselves for putting up with inappropriate behavior. The more they put up with, the worse they feel. Soon, they begin to believe they don't have a right to complain and convince themselves they are making a big thing out of nothing. — Beverly Engel

There is a way of reacting to insult that gives people the impression that you want more. I don't know what it is, but I seem to have mastered it. — Joyce Rachelle

The true sign of a robust and mature life rests in how many times that life has been knocked down, for to be incessantly knocked down and yet find oneself still standing means that someone had the resolve to get up that many times plus one. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Individuality doesn't just mean individualism-standing alone. It means developing one's unique gifts, and being able to share them for the enjoyment of oneself and others. — Frances Moore Lappe

When the possesor of truth was weak and the defender of the lie was strong, was it better to bend before the greater force? Or, by standing firm against it, might one discover a deaper strength in oneself and lay the despot low? When the soldiers of truth launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of the lie, should they be seen as liberators or had they, by using their enemy's weapons against him, themselves become the scorned barbarians whose houses they had set on fire? What were the limits of tolerance? How far, in the pursuit of the right, could we go before we crossed a line, arrived at the antipodes of ourselves, and became wrong? — Salman Rushdie

Experience has shown me that standing by oneself reading from one's book isn't especially compelling - unless you're David Sedaris. — Gayle Forman

She had resolved to never take another step backward. — Kate Chopin

To deny oneself is to act no more from the standing ground of self.... No longing after the praise of men influence a single throb of the heart.
Right deeds, and not the judgment thereupon; true words, and not what reception they may have, shall be our concern. — George MacDonald

One conceals oneself standing silently beside the trunk of a tree and what there is of a reflective tendency in his nature is intensified. One shudders at the thought of the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant, and if the people of the town are his people, one loves life so intensely that tears come into the eyes. — Sherwood Anderson

Standing in the ring of fire, the eye of the storm, the vortex of pain and pressure is simultaneously the most vulnerable and most powerful place to be. Here we embody paradox. We stand our ground and surrender completely. Here we know the full power of the Feminine. — Lucy H. Pearce

It's too easy to forget oneself, to take comfort in becoming part of the great amorphous mass of the thoughtless, the spineless, the soulless, as I would say. To go along with the wrong instead of standing up for what's right. To become nothing because so many are nothing and being nothing takes less effort than becoming something worthwhile. — Lynmar Brock Jr.

[If a man] postpone[s] any open acknowledgement... that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends [are] based... he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and sceptical attitudes which are not really his. But... they may become his. All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. — C.S. Lewis

In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is ... in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to. — Theodore Dalrymple

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. — Theodore Dalrymple

There are those people who try to elevate their souls like someone who continually jumps from a standing position in the hope that forcing oneself to jump all day - and higher every day - they would no longer fall back down, but rise to heaven. Thus occupied, they no longer look to heaven. We cannot even take one step toward heaven. The vertical direction is forbidden to us. But if we look to heaven long-term, God descends and lifts us up. God lifts us up easily. As Aeschylus says, 'That which is divine is without effort.' There is an ease in salvation more difficult for us than all efforts. In one of Grimm's accounts, there is a competition of strength between a giant and a little tailor. The giant throws a stone so high that it takes a very long time before falling back down. The little tailor throws a bird that never comes back down. That which does not have wings always comes back down in the end. — Simone Weil

That is the trouble with standing up to people, of course. Once you start doing it, you can hardly stop. — Catherynne M Valente

You must learn to ignore what people say," Sebastian murmured, coming to her. Standing behind her, he rested his fingers lightly on her shoulders, causing her to start a little. "You'll be much happier that way." Suddenly his voice was tipped with amusement. "I've learned that while gossip about others is often true, it's never true when it is about oneself. — Lisa Kleypas

Belief is just the place of understanding you are at the moment. Without an open mind, you will be standing in that one spot forever. — Dannye Williamsen

We don't like it when women get uppity."
"Well," she said, "that is a bit of a problem, as I am feeling quite uppity. — Sarah MacLean

And to have spent the night sleeping and awoken regretful, is better than to have spent the night standing (in prayer) and awaken impressed with oneself! — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya