We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change. Katharine Hepburn, Me: Stories of My Life
You are who you are when nobody’s watching. Stephen Fry
Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, ‘Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.’ ... [My dark side says,] ‘I am no good ... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned.’ Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved’. Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence. Henri J M Nouwen
If you cannot find peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else. Marvin Gaye
Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self. Franz Kafka
I will follow my instincts. Be myself for good or ill. And see what will be the upshot. As long as I live I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, and storm and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild pathdoms, and get as near to the heart of the world as I can. John Muir
When you’re rotten about yourself, you become rotten to everyone else, even those you love. Mitch Albom, For One More Day
I’ve come to know that what we want in life is the greatest indication of who we really are. Richard Paul Evans, The Gift p331
Some care is needed in using Descartes’ argument. ‘I think, therefore I am’ says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for ‘finding himself’. If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? Thomas Merton
Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were. Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road
There comes a time when all that remains for us to do is to surrender to the idiosyncrasies of our nature. Floriano Martins
As far as you can avoid it, do not give grief to anyone. Never inflict your rage on another. If you hope for eternal rest, feel the pain yourself; but don’t hurt others. Omar Khayyam, Quatrains
To ‘know Thyself’ is considered quite an accomplishment. L Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz
Public self is a conditioned construct of the inner psychological self. Sigmund Freud
Then from those profound slumbers we awake in a dawn, not knowing who we are, being nobody, newly born, ready for anything, the brain emptied of that past which was life until then. And perhaps it is more wonderful still when our landing at the waking-point is abrupt and the thoughts of our sleep, hidden by a cloak of oblivion, have no time to return to us gradually, before sleep ceases. Then, from the black storm through which we seem to have passed (but we do not even say we), we emerge prostrate, without a thought, a we that is void of content. Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah
To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity
a6,355. Let not the rash marble risk
agarrulous breaches of oblivion’s omnipotence,
in many words recalling
name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead man’s life –
the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight –
will abide forever.
Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continue
when it is the lives of others that will make that happen,
as you yourself are the mirror and image
of those who did not live as long as you
aand others will be (and are) your immortality on earth. Jorge Luis Borges
And the idea of ourselves is our escape from the fact what we really are. Jiddu Krishnamurti, What Are You Doing With Your Life
Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time? John Updike, Self-Consciousness
The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever. John Updike
A crucial element of the real self is its unconditional acceptance of itself. Michael Adzema
Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement. Golda Meir
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. Aristotle
The sovereignty of one’s self over one’s self is called Liberty. Albert Pike
The easiest person to deceive is one’s self. Edward G Bulwer-Lytton
The ultimate mystery is one’s own self. Sammy Davis junior
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self place, for where we are is hell,
And where hell is there must we ever be Christopher Marlowe
At thirty a man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves; and re-resolves; then dies the same. Edward Young, Night Thoughts, 1742-5
Know Thyself. Inscription over Temple of Apollo at Delphi
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel ... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become. Ursula K Le Guin
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have laboured hard for. Socrates
The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable. Paul Tillich
Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections. Saint Francis de Sales