Oneself Quotes

The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat oneself.

The human contribution is the essential ingredient. It is only in the giving of oneself to others that we truly live.

To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity.

I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.

One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.

And what I like about it is it makes me happy and I think it makes a lot of people happy to go to the movies and to not think about the problems of the day or the problems of tomorrow or the yesterday and just go on for the ride and have the fun of losing oneself in a fantasy.

The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving.

Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, look like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards.

To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

Discipline in art is a fundamental struggle to understand oneself, as much as to understand what one is drawing.

Of course the other and more serious way in which it all happens is that one finds in poems and language some quality one appropriates for oneself and wishes to reproduce.

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.

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

I believe that misconceptions about oneself that one does not correct where possible act as a bad magic.

There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it.

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.

Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

To know oneself is to disbelieve utopia.

Carrying out the thing, getting it to the point when one might say: There, now it is good - that point is hard to reach. Often, one sets very high goals for oneself. Perhaps too high.

The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.

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

Drama read to oneself is never drama at its best, and is not even drama as it should be.

I sometimes wonder if the inability to find oneself makes one seek oneself in other people, in characters.

In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.

Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us.

It's impossible not to be taken in by the spectacle of oneself, which is the biggest sin of the culture right now.