4,826 Quotes About Self

It is, of course, we who house poems as much as their words, and we ourselves must be the locus of poetry's depth of newness. Still, the permeability seems to travel both ways: a changed self will find new meanings in a good poem, but a good poem also changes the shape of the self.

Sometimes things work just because you think they work. It's as good a definition of faith as any.

Much self-condemnation, thus, is a cloak for arrogance. Those who think they overcome pride by condemning themselves could well ponder Spinoza's remark, 'One who despises himself is the nearest to a proud man'. In ancient Athens, when a politician was trying to get the votes of the working class by appearing very humble in a tattered coat with big holes in it, Socrates unmasked his hypocrisy by exclaiming, 'Your vanity shows forth from every whole in your coat'.

Worldly life is not an impediment; your obstinacies and your ignorance of the self are only the impediments.

I still have a tendency to sit back and wait out the bad things that try and take over my life.

Egoism of the ignorant stage (ignorance of the true self) is considered live egoism. It becomes lifeless after attaining knowledge of the Self. If one takes the side of this lifeless egoism that, “I am not like that”- it will become alive again. Lifeless egoism is to be disposed off; it is not to be protected.

As long as the egoism is alive, ‘my-ness’ remains within the self.

The one with ‘egoism’ and ‘my-ness’ (mamata); the one with the awareness that ‘I am the doer’- are all called ‘Jiva’ [living beings] and he who has attained the realization that ‘I am not the doer, I am the Knower-Seer and I am the form of the eternal-bliss’, then he is the ‘Soul’!

My-ness (mamta) is indeed parigrah [attachment to material objects]; material object is not a parigrah. Gnani doesn’t have My-ness (mamata), He has the eternal element (experience of Pure Soul).