Open your eyes and see how many gifts there are to unwrap. Notice the presence of your presents. It’s not your life that is disappointing: it’s your mind.
Tell me, how do get away from your own self?” she questioned. I knew what she meant with a sickening realization. They knew what I was. Somehow, they had found out my only secret.
If you love too much, you lose yourself. If you love too little, you never find yourself.
…depressive realism. Depression is not the near death experience described by so many, [Kayla Dunn] suggests, but a rebirth in which the new psyche has removed self-delusion. Compared with so-called healthy individuals, depressives are more realist...
The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.
Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.
I had wasted my life in the pursuit of a career, romance, financial independence and the best heels in town when it seems I could have done more for my self esteem with a .38 calibre handgun
Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home.
It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal.
Sam believes now that people repeatedly collide with each other swiftly, brutally – not to produce children but to shatter their sense of self, and be thrust into a creative space beyond reason, where anything can happen. Only through the destructi...
There is one essential requirement for being close with a dying person: the letting go of self-concern.
His immense self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and spread itself in pools at their feet, and all she did, miserable sinner that she was, was to draw her skirts a little closer round her ankles, lest she should get wet.
Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precipe. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man's efficiency.
Maybe that was one of the problems with these men who lived forever, they'd built up an immunity or resistance to affection. Perhaps because when everyone they knew and loved continued to die, they realized the value of distance, of not losing one's ...
He lied all the time even when there was no need to lie [...] He needed a _history_, a sense of self. [Burnside on his father, p. 22]
The child will leave the nest. The best paint job will crack. The best play will become boring. The best work will grow tedious. The best art will lose meaning. The greatest creation will decay. Behind all this, lies my true self.
The self-judging person will always judge others. The rubric we develop for ourselves, the measuring stick we put against our own mind and body, generalizes to every other human being.
There’s no easier way to cure foolishness than to give a man leave to be foolish. And the only way to show a fellow that he’s chosen the wrong business is to let him try it.
People who love themselves come across as very loving, generous and kind; they express their self-confidence through humility, forgiveness and inclusiveness.
He who knows himself, knows his Lord' means, among other things, that self-deception prevents knowledge.
The tragedy of her death was not that it made one, now and then and very intensely, unhappy. It was that it made her unreal; and us solemn, and self-conscious. We were made to act parts that we did not feel; to fumble for words that we did not know. ...
