We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.
We often fancy that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.
He had not even the self-complacency that enables stupid people to accept their mediocrity with unction; he had on the contrary an engaging modesty.
To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.
If I could give my teenaged self any advice, it would be 'Calm down!'
My self-publishing adventure led to my work being picked up by a traditional publisher and eventually hitting the bestseller lists. That led to two more bestselling novels.
I really work on paying attention to the clues my self is giving myself. For instance, I think of myself in the third person. That allows me to manage myself better.
You think you can go into all those auditions not knowing who you are? The work came after I found my sense of self - when I wasn't so manic and desperate.
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.
I think KISS has always been about celebrating self-empowerment. Celebrating the idea that anything is possible with determination and hard work.
All players have 'ordinary' periods in their career and it's hard to explain why. So at these times, its all about self belief, hard work and hopefully you get the break and your form returns.
I'm not too fond of the hard work and the constant battle with self-doubt that goes on when I write, but I figure that's part of the territory.
As long as we depend on other women for self-esteem, using them as bad examples or fantasy versions - special, powerful - of ourselves, they remain stuck in a narcissistic version of themselves, too.
Astaire never thought of what he was doing as balletic, but Kelly was always trying to dance with women on points. And his choreography is so showy and flashy. He always looks self-satisfied to me.
Being a mother is complicated because it's not just a paternal culture making demands on you; it's those internal demands and expectations that women have and are self-generated.
There is nothing worth having that can he obtained by nuclear war - nothing material or ideological - no tradition that it can defend. It is utterly self-defeating.
Our strategy is one of preventing war by making it self-evident to our enemies that they're going to get their clocks cleaned if they start one.
As I focus on diligent joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once -- that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smalle...
Her mind moved around and around the subject, moving with a kind of fuzzy firmness. With no coherent thought process, she arrived at a conviction - a habit with the basically insecure; an insecurity whose seeds are invariably planted earlier, in unde...
The non-jocks, the readers, the gay kids, the ones starting to stew about social injustice: for these kids, "letting your freak flag fly" is both self discovery and self defense. You cry for this bunch at the mandatory pep assemblies. Huddled togethe...
