If I can be my crazy, wild self in front of a person, and he still likes me, that's romantic.
You must be ready to give up everything, not only material attachments but also human attachments - father, mother, wife, children - everything that you have. But the one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.
Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.
Writing itself is a dream. There are days of self doubt and deadlines and wondering how you're going to pay the bills until you write that bestseller. But it's still the best job I've ever had. I've also been able to help a lot of people and even inspire a few and that feels great.
Let us die as soon as possible, and by whatever process God shall appoint. And when we are dead to the world, and nature, and self, we shall begin to live to God.
To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness.
If you manifest your true self through nature and your normal surroundings, I find that the most eerie. Like when you see birds suddenly start flying in a different direction or when you see moths forming weird shapes, I think that's the weirdest way to let yourself be known.
It's not like my old self - I'm not in character anymore, I'm me. I'm not hiding behind that anymore.
Getting in touch with your true self must be your first priority.
I have never known a really chic woman whose appearance was not, in large part, an outward reflection of her inner self.
Everyone seems to be fleeing from the responsibilities that come from being who you are. I think that is why the blogosphere is thriving. It allows people to develop a fantasy self.
The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.
I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that you really must make the self.
Set me a task in which I can put something of my very self, and it is a task no longer; it is joy; it is art.
The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.
Self criticism must be my guide to action, and the first rule for its employment is that in itself it is not a virtue, only a procedure.
True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.
It seems that it is madder never to abandon one's self than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive and a slave, than always to walk in armor.
My real self, the self I have always been from a child, is a loner and nerd, slightly overweight, with a very heavy fringe. That is who I was as a kid. I don't think I will ever be anything other than that.
Revolution begins with the self, in the self.
Even two of humanity's most intimate possessions - a sense of self and a body image - are fluid, highly modifiable creations of the brain's mischievous deployment of electricity and a handful of chemicals. They both can change or be changed on less than a second's notice.
When I write a poem, I go into a state of self-forgetfulness, and something higher takes over; I like to call it my best self.
The ultimate mystery is one's own self.
It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.
When a young non-white male is stopped and searched at the whim of a police officer, his idea of personal space, privacy and self esteem are shattered, to say nothing of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment protections. The damage goes deep quickly and stays. Stop & frisk, as well as a tactic, is also an incitement.
When at the CIA, I was fond of saying that many jihadis join the movement for the same reasons that young Americans join the Crips and the Bloods: youthful alienation, the need to belong to something greater than self, the search for meaningful identity. But it also matters what gang you join.
The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.
If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books.
A guy who's actually self destructive is quite fun to play.
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.
Social issues have been used to distract Americans from their own self interests since Nixon's southern strategy, and now people are paying the price.
The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny.
My first novel, 'Man Walks Into a Room,' is about a man who's lost his memory and has to start a second life. On one level, it's about how we create a coherent sense of self.
One of the great things about wrestling is how it interrogates this silly idea that you have one authentic self.
