Oneself Quotes

Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning.

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

To be a great man and a saint for oneself, that is the only important thing.

Nobody can teach what is inside a person; it has to be discovered for oneself and a way must be found to express it.

Lies that do not hurt, which are different from lies that protect oneself or hurt another person. That is not my business. But the truth is mostly very boring, and you can help it along with lies. There is no harm in that.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.

Real beauty is to be true to oneself. That's what makes me feel good.

It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer.

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.

Freeing oneself from words is liberation.

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement. I will not try it. Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.

True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people feel one ought to be or assume that one is.

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

To forgive oneself? No, that doesn't work: we have to be forgiven. But we can only believe this is possible if we ourselves can forgive.

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

Me personally, I'm a guy who it took a long time to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. I relate to a lot of that finding oneself a little later in the game, or being thrown a curve later in the game.

Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.

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

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

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

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.

I always have a very strong sense of shaming oneself, and you can do that a lot in the public eye, so it's best avoided at all costs I think.

Beauty is about perception, not about make-up. I think the beginning of all beauty is knowing and liking oneself. You can't put on make-up, or dress yourself, or do you hair with any sort of fun or joy if you're doing it from a position of correction.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die - and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

My painting is visible images which conceal nothing... they evoke mystery and indeed when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.

One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity.

Florida isn't so much a place where one goes to reinvent oneself, as it is a place where one goes if one no longer wished to be found.