Oneself Quotations

Men invent means and methods of coming at God's love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God's presence. Yet it might be so simple. Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for the love of him?

But what is the greatest evil? If you are going to epitomize evil, what is it? Is it the bomb? The greatest evil that one has to fight constantly, every minute of the day until one dies, is the worse part of oneself

To throw oneself to the side of the oppressed is the only dignified thing to do in life.

As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses.

The whole problem of the sound-work is distancing oneself from the dramatic.

I think writing is an extension of a childhood habit - the habit of entertaining oneself by taking interesting bits of reality and building upon them.

The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live.

Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.

I don't believe complete assimilation is possible, at least not for anyone who has an active, open mind. Every step, every entry into the flows of existence can be seen as a beginning, a commencement of a brand new way of seeing oneself in the world. This is the case for everyone.

The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world

Since Socrates and Plato first speculated on the nature of the human mind, serious thinkers through the ages - from Aristotle to Descartes, from Aeschylus to Strindberg and Ingmar Bergman - have thought it wise to understand oneself and one's behavior.

What one hides is worth neither more nor less than what one finds. And what one hides from oneself is worth neither more nor less than what one allows others to find.

One of the things that evangelicals do really, really well is to make giving a joyous, social enterprise. Too often, the world sees giving as a burden, a sacrifice, when in fact it's more like an opportunity to help others and oneself at the same time.

It is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph.

In order to engage in an 'experiencing of the world,' one has to physically move oneself to the most diverse places on earth.

To convince oneself that one has the right to live decently takes time.

Comparing oneself with one's fellow writers is a bad idea. I would not review a fellow writer unless I had something terribly positive to say.

The older one gets the more one comes to resemble oneself.

What comes from oneself is nearly from no one. There is only me as a link.

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

Every day without fail one should consider himself as dead. There is a saying of the elders that goes, 'Step from under the eaves and you're a dead man. Leave the gate and the enemy is waiting.' This is not a matter of being careful. It is to consider oneself as dead beforehand.

I knew 'Bad Girls' attracts a younger audience, and it's vital to get oneself known to that audience because, unless they watch me in re-runs on 'U.K. Gold,' they won't know me from a hole in the ground.

Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.

Certainly, cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest.

Being a unique superpower undermines the military intelligence of strategy. To think strategically, one has to imagine oneself in the enemy's place. If one cannot do this, it is impossible to foresee, to take by surprise, to outflank. Misinterpreting an enemy can lead to defeat. This is how empires fall.

There are things one must do for oneself.

Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

There is only one instrument which is adequate to investigate the things of the spirit, and that is the Spirit itself. Just as it is necessary to train a man for scientific research in the physical world, so also is a long and slow process required to fit oneself for investigation of the spiritual world.

Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning.

Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one's way.

When the crying child is immediately isolated, and it is explained to him at the same time that whoever annoys others must not be with them, if this isolation is the absolute result and cannot be avoided, in the child's mind a basis is laid for the experience that one must be alone when one makes oneself unpleasant or disagreeable.

To speak of oneself means to lay bare one's own soul, expose it like a body to the sun. To lay bare one's own soul is not at all like taking off one's brassiere on a crowded beach!

Part of the satisfaction of tattling surely comes from showing oneself to adults as a good moral agent, a responsible being who is sensitive to right and wrong. But I would bet that children would tattle even if they could do so only anonymously. They would do it just to have justice done.

Only by keeping oneself in constant process of growth, under the constant influence of the best things in one's own age, does one become a companion halfway good enough for one's children.

In a democracy one must have the right to express oneself and that's what I do, even if it displeases.

To be a writer you have to be out in the world, you have to risk yourself in the world, you have to be immersed in the world, you have to go out looking for it. This becomes harder as you get older because there's less energy, the days are shorter for older people and it's not so easy to go out and immerse oneself in the world outside.

To Live signifies to believe and hope - to lie and to lie to oneself.

The publishing scene in India is evolving rapidly, and the key challenge is to keep reinventing oneself so that one does not become formulaic. Sometimes it is safer to deal with the consequences of failure than the fruits of success. Remaining on one's toes is critical, and often one finds that success makes one complacent.

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

The poet is primarily a spokesman, making statements or incantations on behalf of himself or others - usually for both, for it is difficult to speak for oneself without speaking for others or to speak for others without speaking for oneself.

The main thing is to remain oneself, under any circumstances; that was and is our common purpose.

Faith...is letting go and trusting oneself to the unknown.

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.

Opening to oneself fully is opening to the world.

It takes loneliness in oneself to recognize it in another.

Expressing oneself is like a drug. I'm so addicted to it.

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking.

One shouldn't allow oneself to be intimidated by something that can be picked up and tucked under one's arm.

Much of living is an attempt to preserve oneself by annexing and occupying others.

To think at its best is to find oneself carried down the current of necessity.

In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

Freeing oneself from words is liberation.

To underestimate oneself is as much an exaggeration of one's powers than the other.

Rise above oneself and grasp the world.

All resistance is a rupture with what is. And every rupture begins, for those engaged in it, through a rupture with oneself.

The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.

The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.

One must train oneself, by small and frequent efforts, to dominate one's feelings.

. . . life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.

Life in New York is one of succumbing to a tidal wave of control and direction, of numbing oneself to emotion.

Love is not a feeling. Love is an action, an activity. . .Genuine love implies commitment and the exercise of wisdom. . . . love as the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.....true love is an act of will that often transcends ephemeral feelings of love or cathexis, it is correct to say, 'Love is as love does'.

Leaders are readers, so lead oneself to read!

One should examine oneself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others

One should speak little with others and much with oneself

One must not make oneself cheap here -- that is a cardinal point -- or else one is done. Whoever is most impertinent has the best chance.

Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary's life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.

RIBROASTER, n. Censorious language by oneself concerning another. The word is of classical refinement, and is even said to have been used in a fable by Georgius Coadjutor, one of the most fastidious writers of the fifteenth century --commonly, indeed, regarded as the founder of the Fastidiotic School.

Poetry is a vocal art for me - but not necessarily a performative one. It might be reading to oneself or recalling some lines by memory.

Only what is really oneself has the power to heal.

I find it doesn't pay to take oneself too seriously. And I like that sort of irreverence when I see it with other people.

Giving oneself permission to write to begin with is the first enormous challenge. But you discover that this permission involves a requirement: To write about things that are difficult because they are, in fact, your subject.

What is done for another is done for oneself

To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. You cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers.

It is more difficult to contend with oneself than with the world.

Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world - making the most of one's best.

It is easy to look back, self-indulgently, feeling pleasantly sorry for oneself and saying I didn't have this and I didn't have that. But it is only the grown woman regretting the hardships of a little girl who never thought they were hardships at all. She had the things that really mattered.

It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others.

I was probably 14 or 15 when I was first on stage at school doing 'Measure for Measure.' I immediately felt it was a great way of expressing oneself at a moment when I didn't think I could express myself, really. I suddenly had access to this range of emotions and thoughts and feelings that were there in me. I was surprised by that.

Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, and in lending oneself to the universal delusion without becoming its dupe.

To limit oneself to finding a mate on hikes is the wrong thing to do. I belong to Parents Without Partners, Events and Adventures, Space City Mixer and Great Expectations. Stay away from Internet dating. I take dance classes and go to dances. Women love to dance. I met my current girlfriend at a dance, and she comes with me on nearly all my Mountaineers hikes. She likes to bike ride and ski, too.

True liberty cannot be attained if one lives in fear. Fear exists if one does not nourish oneself with inner peace.

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.

Hasting - There are times when it is one's duty to assert oneself.

To have a sense of history one must consider oneself a piece of history....

It is easier to become entangled with an enemy than to disentangle oneself afterwards.

Resenting the obtuseness of others is not good ground for shooting oneself in the foot.

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.

Rare indeed, is the relationship in which the other is not cultivated for what one can get for oneself.

He knew that conscience was chiefly fear of society or fear of oneself.

to remember the past is to commit oneself to the future... and to remember Hiroshima is to commit oneself to peace.

When one first seeks the truth, one separates oneself from it.

Forgetting oneself is opening oneself

There is only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best

When you are not treated seriously, you develop comically. Its sense of oneself is so fractured and fragile that it's like the picked-on kid who has to become funny.

Unfortunate impracticability of temper and spirit of opposition of those in authority over oneself misled oneself into frequent collision with my predecessors.

What torments my soul is its loneliness. The more it expands among friends and the daily habits or pleasures, the more, it seems to me, it flees me and retires into its fortress. The poet who lives in solitude, but who produces much, is the one who enjoys those treasures we bear in our bosom, but which forsake us when we give ourselves to others. When one yields oneself completely to one's soul, it opens itself to one, and then it is that the capricious thing allows one the greatest of good fortunes... that of sympathizing with others, of studying itself, of painting itself constantly in its works.

To be forced to defend oneself is an inherently undesirable position to be in. The focus shifts from ideas to the person conveying them.

Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

tearing oneself apart for the amusement of the audience.