Self quotes

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited. Jorge Luis Borges
(also about
Philosophy, Personality)
Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors. Jim Rohn
(also about
Personality, Self-determination)
Be silly. Be honest. Be kind. Ralph Waldo Emerson
(also about
Advice, Simplicity)
Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time. Elbert Hubbard
(also about
Character)

Self quotes by Abraham Linkoln

Also about
Morality, Principles
Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition. Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

Self quotes by Eleanor Roosevelt

Also about
Personality, Integrity
I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else … you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.
One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside. John Lennon
(also about
Personality)
I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician. Charles Chaplin
(also about
Humour)
We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action. Aristotle
(also about
Personality, Action)

Self quotes by Sigmund Freud

Also about
Psychology, Struggle, Unconscious
Public self is a conditioned construct of the inner psychological self. No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.

Self quotes by Helen Keller

Also about
Perfection
I am not a perfect being... I have more faults than I know what to do with. I have a naughty temper. I am stubborn, impatient of hindrances and of stupidity. I have not in the truest sense a Christian spirit. I am naturally a fighter. I am lazy. I put off till tomorrow what I might better do today. I do not feel that I have been compensated for the two senses I lack. I have worked hard for all the senses I have got, and always I beg for more. I am younger today than I was at twenty-five. Of course the furrows of suffering have been dug deeper, but so have those of understanding sympathy and inner happiness. Whatever age may do to my earthly shell, I shall never grow cynical or indifferent — and one cannot measure the reserve power locked up in that assurance.

Self quotes by Victor Hugo

Also about
Advice, Experience, Self-determination, Integrity, Soul, Humanism, Planning
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots. Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life. Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars. He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life.
The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change. Richard Bach
(also about
Life, Simplicity)
Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
(also about
Love, Personality)

Self quotes by Albert Camus

Also about
Personality, Self-determination
To know oneself, one should assert oneself. At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.
In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. Stephen Covey
(also about
Reputation)
What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization. Abraham Maslow
(also about
Psychology)
I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap dancer. I like to move around. Jimi Hendrix
(also about
Personality, Professionalism)
I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self. Martin Luther
(also about
Fear)
You are perfect exactly as you are. All you need to change is the thought that you aren't good enough. Anonymous
(also about
Inspiration, Perfection)

Self quotes by Buddha

Also about
Buddhism, Evil, Mind, Vice, Influence
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
Bob Marley isn't my name. I don't even know my name yet. Bob Marley
If you are never alone, you cannot know yourself. Paulo Coelho
(also about
Loneliness, Solitude, Introspection)
Retire to the center of your being, which is calmness. Paramahansa Yogananda
(also about
Wisdom)
More and more, it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself. Chuck Palahniuk

Self quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

Also about
Personality, Individuality, Sin
To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it's hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody. The sin of smiling whilst Louise was weeping, the sin of shedding my own tears and not hers. The sin of being another being.
Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude. Michelle Obama
(also about
Inspiration, Success, Confidence)
Remember that the truth within yourself will always be greater than the truth found in these pages. These stories are here to guide us—to help us find that truth, not to tell us what it is. Andy Kaufman
(also about
Inspiration, Truth)
I am like any other man. All I do is supply a demand. Al Capone
Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got. Janis Joplin
The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself. Francis Bacon
(also about
Philosophy, Integrity)
Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise. Lewis Carroll
(also about
Humour, Personality, Individuality)

Self quotes by James Joyce

Also about
Personality, Introspection, Life, People
Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.
There is always a certain peace in being what one is, in being that completely. Ugo Betti
(also about
Personality, Integrity, Individuality)
Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations. Alfred Adler
(also about
Psychology, Personality, Symbolism, Behaviour, Self-determination)
Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself. Sinclair Lewis

Self quotes by Leo Tolstoy

Also about
Wisdom, Change, Psychology, Failure, Self-determination, Death, Personality, Fear
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. We lost because we told ourselves we lost. Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.
I'm kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I'm always hot. Haruki Murakami
(also about
Personality, Character)

Self quotes by Walt Whitman

Also about
Perfection, Personality, Character, Inferiority, Individuality, Inspiration, Fortune, Mistakes
I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best. Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune. I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

Self quotes by Franz Kafka

Also about
Psychology, Introspection, Books, Self-determination
How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world. Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.
It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. Marcel Proust
(also about
Life, Body)

Self quotes by Truman Capote

Also about
Humour, Freedom, Introspection, Fear, Anxiety, Life, People
Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy. You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself. Our real fears are the sounds of footsteps walking in the corridors of our minds, and the anxieties, the phantom floatings, they create. You don't run out on people; you run out on yourself.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. Kurt Vonnegut
(also about
Psychology, Personality, Pretending, Individuality)
Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience. Harper Lee
(also about
Wisdom, Life, Philosophy, Conscience, Self-perception)
She wondered what she thought of herself, and came to the realization that she felt mostly indifference towards her entire life. Stieg Larsson
(also about
Indifference, Self-perception)

Self quotes by John Steinbeck

Also about
Life, Personality, Experience, Humanism, Writing, Philanthropy
A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
What happens if you drop all the things that make you I? Graham Greene
(also about
Integrity, Individuality)
If I have not the power to put myself in the place of other people, but must be continually burrowing inward, I shall never be the magnanimous creative person I wish to be. Yet I am hypnotized by the workings of the individual, alone, and am continually using myself as a specimen. Sylvia Plath
(also about
Understanding, Personality)
Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues. F. Scott Fitzgerald
(also about
Humour, Virtue, Suspicion)

Self quotes by Joseph Conrad

Also about
Wisdom, Conscience, Betrayal, Struggle, Personality, Character
They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience He struggled with himself, too. I saw it - I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself. We can never cease to be ourselves.
Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
(also about
Wisdom, Enemies, Personality, Introspection)

Self quotes by Ralph Ellison

Also about
Freedom, Introspection, Danger, Loss, Integrity, Experience, Search
When I discover who I am, I'll be free Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.

Self quotes by Honoré de Balzac

Also about
Integrity, Communication, Humour, Personality
Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself. I am not deep, but I am very wide.
Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you're the funniest person you've ever heard of Maya Angelou
(also about
Fun, Stories)
I am out with lanterns, looking for myself. Emily Dickinson
(also about
Search, Introspection)
I'm still Sean that me mates went to school with, not Sean the film star. And that's the way I prefer to be. Sean Bean
(also about
Personality, Fame)
Do not compare yourself to others. If you do so, you are insulting yourself. Adolf Hitler
(also about
Individuality)
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world. George Bernard Shaw
(also about
Advice, Personality)