Unself Quotes & Sayings

I give speeches at megachurches across America, and the one thing that's really striking about it is how utterly, completely diverse they are, and completely unself-consciously. At these huge megachurches the idea that the more Christian you are, the less tolerant you would be is preposterous. — Ann Coulter

She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things - — Dan Simmons

Bowen looked nervously about for peasants. It would be unendurable if they all turned out to be full of instinctive wisdom and natural good manners and unself-conscious grace and a deep, articulate understanding of death. — Kingsley Amis

One ought to be ashamed to make use of the wonders of science embodied in a radio set, the while appreciating them as little as a cow appreciates the botanic marvels in the plants she munches. — Albert Einstein

I would venture a guess that an artist concentrating wholly unself-consciously, wholly thrown into his work, is incapable of producing pornography. — Madeleine L'Engle

1. Only a total unself-consciousness will permit me to live with myself (202). — Annie Dillard

White people can be so unself-conscious. It's offensive, charming, and pathetic, all at the same time. — Barbara Browning

When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child, this is: art: prayer: love. — Madeleine L'Engle

What I call innocence is the spirit's unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object. It is at once a receptiveness and total concentration. One needn't be, shouldn't be, reduced to a puppy. If you wish to tell me that the city offers galleries, I'll pour you a drink and enjoy your company while it lasts; but I'll bear with me to my grave those pure moments at the Tate (was it the Tate?) where I stood planted, open-mouthed, born, before that one particular canvas, that river up to my neck, gasping, lost, receding into watercolor depth and depth to the vanishing point, buoyant, awed, and had to be literally hauled away. These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present. — Annie Dillard

[At Boston College] I started working on the kinds of skills that you need for comedy. It's about being creative and learning to use your gift for being able to let loose and be very unself-conscious. It took me time though before I was really able to get comfortable doing that. — Amy Poehler

Passionate intimacy between people of the same sex was common in pre - Civil War America. The lack of clear sexual categories (homo-, hetero-, bi-) made same-sex affection unself-conscious and widespread. — David S. Reynolds

Attachment is defined as conditional love, while love with the universe is eternal and unconditional. If you want someone to behave according to your rules then that's not love, that's attachment. — Hina Hashmi

All who have accomplished great things have had a great aim, have fixed their gaze on a goal which was high, one which sometimes seemed impossible. — Orison Swett Marden

Directly he was alone, he was assailed by her simulacra, in all states of acute sorrow, or smiling, of complete abstraction or painful animation, of dress and undress, as he had seen her these last few days: directly he was alone, the images came to mock everything he had seen. Her sadness became shrieking grief, and her animation riotous, immodest in dress and licentious in nakedness, many-limbed as some wild avatar of the Hindu cosmology assaulting the days he spent copying his work on clean scores, and the nights he passed alone in his chair where, instantly the lights went out, everything was transformed, and the body he had seen a moment before with no more surprise than its simple lines and modest unself-conscious movement permitted, rose up on him full-breasted and vaunting the belly, limbs undistinguishable until he was brought down between them and stifled in moist collapse. — William Gaddis

Sarai had treasured every stage of Rachel's childhood, enjoying the day-to-day normalcy of things; a normalcy which she quietly accepted as the best of life. She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things - the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossings and connections casual, dialogues imminently forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal. — Dan Simmons

I liked his voice, rich and unself-conscious even when he forgot words and hummed to fill in the gap. What I didn't understand, I imagined, and thus it became a love song. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Well, my wife and I were married in a toilet - it was a marriage of convenience! — Tommy Cooper

In fact, because the unself-aware - which includes basically everybody - are impervious to uncharitable perceptions of their underlying motives, all these insights you have into people and what makes them tick are surprisingly useless. — Lionel Shriver

When Ms. Adams took attendance and called out the name of an absent classmate, Noah's hand shot up. I watched him cautiously. After she finished roll call, Noah stood, completely unself-conscious as heads followed his progress to the front of the room.
"Um - " Ms. Adams checked her clipboard. "Ibrahim Hassin?"
Noah nodded. I died. — Michelle Hodkin

I'm competitive. I like to compete, and that's basically what the decathlon lets me do. — Bryan Clay

Pray when you're alone. Pray when you're with a lot of people. Pray when you're in small groups. Pray on your way in; pray on your way out. Pray in your closet, in your car, at your desk. Pray morning prayers, pray mealtime prayers, pray in between mealtimes. Pray fervently, expectantly, and unself-consciously. Pray when you're burdened, worried, sick, or brokenhearted. Pray when you're soaring, setting records, or dancing on a mountaintop. Pray when you're up, and pray when you're down. Pray when you're healthy, when you're sick, when you feel like it, and when you don't. (Especially when you don't.) — Bill Hybels

I'd never seen a grown man cry like that before, so unself-consciously, so unashamedly. I didn't know if he was crying for what he'd lost, or for what he'd never had, but there was a beauty in his tears that moved me more than I could ever explain with words - a beauty in the honesty of his sadness, in the grace of it's purity. It was holy water raining down from the clouds in his eyes, falling to the sand then being carried back to the source from which it came - his blessed sea. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

My name is Abbey. And I'm in love with a ghost. — Jessica Verday

What's precious about somebody like Bill Vollmann is that, even though there's a great deal of formal innovation in his fictions, it rarely seems to exist for just its own sake. It's almost always deployed to make some point (Vollmann's the most editorial young novelist going right now, and he's great at using formal ingenuity to make the editorializing a component of his narrative instead of an interruption) or to create an effect that's internal to the text. His narrator's always weirdly effaced, the writing unself-conscious, despite all the "By-the-way-Dear-reader" intrusions. In a way it's sad that Vollmann's integrity is so remarkable. Its remarkability means it's rare — David Foster Wallace

To feel safe is to stop living in my head and sink down into my heart and feel liked and accepted ... not having to hide anymore and distract myself with books, television, movies, ice cream, shallow conversation ... staying in the present moment and not escaping into the past or projecting into the future, alert and attentive to the now ... feeling relaxed and not nervous or jittery ... no need to impress or dazzle others or draw attention to myself. ... Unself-conscious, a new way of being with myself, a new way of being in the world ... calm, unafraid, no anxiety about what's going to happen next ... loved and valued ... just being together as an end in itself. — Brennan Manning

Astronauts have been stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. American attempts to kick-start a new phase of lunar exploration have stalled amid the realisation that NASA's budget is too small for the job. — Paul Davies

For the rest of the earth's organisms, existence is relatively uncomplicated. Their lives are about three things: survival, reproduction, death - and nothing else. But we know too much to content ourselves with surviving, reproducing, dying - and nothing else. We know we are alive and know we will die. We also know we will suffer during our lives before suffering - slowly or quickly - as we draw near to death. This is the knowledge we "enjoy" as the most intelligent organisms to gush from the womb of nature. And being so, we feel shortchanged if there is nothing else for us than to survive, reproduce, and die. We want there to be more to it than that, or to think there is. This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are - hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones. — Thomas Ligotti

This creature serves you?" Sanya asked.
"This one and about a hundred smaller ones. And five times that many part-timers I can call in once in awhile." I thought about it. "It isn't so much that they serve me as that we have a business arrangement that we all like. They help me out from time to time. I furnish them with regular pizza."
"Which they ... love," Sanya said.
Toot spun in a dizzy, delighted circle on one heel, and fell onto his back with perfectly unself-conscious enthusiasm, his tummy sticking out as far as it could. He lay there for a moment, making happy, gurgling sounds.
"Well," I said. "Yes."
Sanya's eyes danced, though his face was sober. "You are a drug dealer. To tiny faeries. Shame. — Jim Butcher

You have Showtime, you have AMC, you have all of these, you know, incredible networks that are now bringing forth their product without the handcuffs, if you will, of trying to sell soap to the entire country. — Gina Torres

In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps,
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures. — Philip Larkin

And there, far ahead of me, running by the side of the road, a human. The low sun stretched his shadow out one hundred times taller than him. Cole St. Clair, running alongside the wolves, side-stepping debris on the roadside every so often and sometimes jumping the ditch for a few strides and then back again. He held his arms out for balance as he leaped, unself-conscious, like a boy. There was something so fiercely big about the gesture of Cole running with the wolves that it made the last thing I said to him ring in my ears. — Maggie Stiefvater

Girls love each other like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don't guard ourselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each other. With girls, it's total vulnerability from the beginning. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It's feral.
And it's relentless. — Leah Raeder

Great acting can be almost a psychotic mix of self-consciousness and unself-consciousness. And thats the terrible conflict. You have to be free to jump off into that volcano and you have to be pathologically self-conscious. — Alec Baldwin

On the contrary, the male has a vested interest in ignorance; it gives the few knowledgeable men a decided edge on the unknowledgeable ones, and besides, the male knows that an enlightened, aware female population will mean the end of him. The healthy, conceited female wants the company of equals whom she can respect and groove on; the male and the sick, insecure, unself-confident male female crave the company of worms. — Valerie Solanas