Self Quotes

Choose a self and stand by it.

If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over - fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all. And then comes the hitherto unbelievable surprise; you don't die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are.

The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.

You are something that the whole world is doing just as when the sea has waves on it.

Be as you wish to seem.

Your happiness depends on you alone.

I want to be freed neither from human beings, nor from myself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest of miracles.

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. ... My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known - no wonder, then, that I return the love.

Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.

I don't want to be a genius-I have enough problems just trying to be a man.

I can only think seriously of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve myself, if I am split in two pieces. There must be a good “I” who is going to improve the bad “me.” “I,” who has the best intentions, will go to work on wayward “me,” and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently “I” will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make “me” behave so badly.

Look at me as many times as you wish,but you won’t get to know me!Since you have last seen me,I’ve changed a hundred times!

You are the sky. The clouds are what happens, what comes and goes.

Be as thou wast wont to be.See as thou wast wont to see.

For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone.

It is only when a man is alone that he is really free.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

What we have learned from other becomes our own reflection.

The main task of the spirit is to free man from his ego.

When you start to live outside yourself, it's all dangerous.

If I am not I, who will be?

I cannot remember my past, my nose, or the colour of my eyes, or what my general opinion of myself is. Only in moments of emergency, at a crossing, at a kerb, the wish to preserve my body springs out and seizes me and stops me , here, before this omnibus. We insist, it seems, on living. Then again, indifference descends.

I seek to bring forth what you almost already know.

Therapy is the boat across the river, but most don't want to get off. Don't blame, forgive, All healing is self-healing

... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences.

Things do not change; we change.

The further and further we look out with our telescopes and the further and further we look in with our microscopes, the larger and larger and smaller and smaller the universe becomes in order to escape the investigation because we are the universe looking at itself.

Who ever saw his old clothes, - his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Yes, and even for the past...that it will turn out to have been all right for what it was. Something I can accept. Mistakes made by the self I had to be or was not able to be.

The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.

The hardest victory is the victory over self.

Basically, there is simply nothing to worry about, because you yourself are the eternal energy of the universe.

If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone.

I imitate everyone except myself.

Success is as dangerous as failure.Hope is as hollow as fear.What does it mean that success is a dangerous as failure?Whether you go up the ladder or down it,you position is shaky.When you stand with your two feet on the ground,you will always keep your balance.What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?Hope and fear are both phantomsthat arise from thinking of the self.When we don't see the self as self,what do we have to fear?See the world as your self.Have faith in the way things are.Love the world as your self;then you can care for all things.

Greatness doesn’t come from what you do, but from who you are.

You are the universe experiencing itself.

Every man is his own hell.

In morality, man treats himself not as individuum but as dividuum.

In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.

The bad man is continually at war with, and in opposition to, himself.

I need solitude, which is to say, recovery, return to my self, the breath of a free, light, playful air.

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

All people have three characters, that which they exhibit, that which they have, and that which they think they have.

When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.

In me, by myself, without human relationship, there are no visible lies. The limited circle is pure.

Until we realise ourselves as the Absolute, we cannot attain to deliverance.

Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.

The real friend is another self.

I long for truth, and yetI cannot stay from thatMy better self disowns,For a man's attentionBrings such satisfactionTo the craving in my bones.

Authenticity is about being true to who you are, even when everyone around you wants you to be someone else

He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.

The only important thing is to follow nature. A tiger should be a good tiger; a tree, a good tree. So people should be people. But to know what people are, one must follow nature and go alone, admitting the importance of the unexpected. Still, nothing is possible without love. . . . For love puts one in a mood to risk everything, and not to withhold important elements.

We talk about taking "pleasure in a thing": but in truth it is pleasure in ourselves, mediated by a thing.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

I am the leading strings of the ego and the prompter of its concepts.

Who you are and what you know when you are born is everything that you need to know to thrive. You are born with a sense of self and a sense of wanting self to feel good and the mechanisms to bring it about.

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.