4,826 Quotes About Self

If you try to examine your life analytically, asking yourself who you are, finally you will realize that there is something you cannot reach. You don’t know what it is, but you feel the presence of something you want to connect with. This is sometimes called the absolute. Buddha and Dogen Zenji say true self. Christians say God.

Despair, the worst of all the deadly sins, since it is denial of the self, of the god-in-self, since it is so seductive, like the snow-death, so warm. Ah, who would tear himself to pieces when he might lie down in such arms, in comfort, and cease. Bless you, my despair, my dear and loving despair. So painlessly you take my pain away. Oh Father, by no means dash the cup from my lips -

Why, it’s a regular torture, Miriam, that I am always both, the one standing with a stern face, arms crossed over my chest—and the one who is suddenly gutted and falls and falls, and while falling is still arguing with the stern one, screaming on the way to his doom, Let me live! Let me feel! Let me make mistakes!

Being someone is not a biological need.

The true indicator that I love myself is that I choose to love others above myself.

No one my age had ever wanted to be both man and woman-with both men and women.

We are not complete in ourselves without others, without a world to complement our self-conception—and were we to become so complete, we could not bear it! The fullness of ourselves would break us. We burn. The point of Figment/Fragment/Filament”—claws spread to encompass the whole warehouse space—“is to reflect, refract the beauty of physical form, the glorious futility of our quest for complete knowledge, mastery, or independence.

Physician heal thyself.

I look the same. I also look like a complete stranger.