There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.
I learned how to believe in myself. Learned how to set goals, you know, self help books man. I just read every single one I can get a hold of, and I still do.
As years passed away I have formed the habit of looking back upon that former self as upon another person, the remembrance of whose emotions has been a solace in adversity and added zest to the enjoyment of prosperity.
When I lead essay workshops, I ask students to come up with at least five topics, which they'll narrow down to one. The winning idea should be the story the student is most excited to tell because it honestly reflects his or her best self.
While overeating would be seen by some as an indulgence of self, it is in fact a profound rejection of self. It is a moment of self-betrayal and self-punishment, and anything but a commitment to one's own well-being.
I jumped off the wheel of fortune because I wanted to simplify things. Now I've fulfilled my obligations to myself by making my new record. I'd like it to sell millions of copies, but my self - worth is not based on chart positions.
One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn't know was in you, or in the world.
Drugs have nothing to do with the creation of music. In fact, they are dumb and self indulgent. Kind of like sucking your thumb!
Like blind hens, we are ignorant of our own self and the depths within us.
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
In other words, knowledge of the external world begins with an immediate utilisation of things, whereas knowledge of self is stopped by this purely practical and utilitarian contact.
We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.
Social media is an advertisement for the superficial extroverted self.
When you fit meditation into your day, you bring much more of yourself to all the other hours of your day - you bring your whole self rather than your stressed-out self.
When you start becoming really successful, the demons start to tempt you - the demons of vanity and self importance, drug abuse, the feelings of fraudulence. But, it's also a thrill. That's what I found weird.
Secular artists see themselves with performance; they are more self involved, presentational.
Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.
As I look back and connect the dots, all I want to do is go back and hug my scared young self, who took a lot of steps out of impulse not knowing what will happen. So many nights of disappointment, so many others of being disillusioned where I would have just gone ahead and quit it all - I still do not know what kept me hanging in there.
But that's something that I like about scoring film: it makes me reach out of the parameters of my self, it requires me to do things musically that I wouldn't normally do left to my own devices.
Bondage is the life of personality, and for bondage the personal self will fight with tireless resourcefulness and the most stubborn cunning.
Novelists are in the business of constructing consciousness out of words, and that's what we all do, cradle to grave. The self is a story we tell.
Never mind. The self is the least of it. Let our scars fall in love.
The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.
My self healing lies in praying for those who have harmed me.
There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self.
I adore the challenge of creating truly modern clothes, where a woman's personality and sense of self are revealed. I want people to see the dress, but focus on the woman.
I wanted to avoid all that literary stuff. I didn't want the self pity of 'The Portrait,' all the moaning and the whingeing. I'm not knocking Joyce: we all owe him a debt. He's the one who made so much possible.
The goal of art was the vital expression of self.
I'm a firm believer that actors take to work who they aren't at home. People show their other self in their art or in their work.
I have to understand what my strengths and limitations are, and work from a true place. I try to do this as best I can while still protecting my writer self, which more than ever needs privacy.
The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.
When I started writing, I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and memories. It's richer, in a way.
Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one's self, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.
Everyone must correct his own self; this is something more difficult to cope with, but it is not impossible.