Top 50 Giving Oneself Quotes
#1. Nate hated, really hated, being told he thought too much. Jason wasn't the only one who said it: hippie-dippie types who romanticize the natural and the "intuitive" also prefer feeling to thought. But not thinking was a way of giving oneself license to be a dick.
Adelle Waldman
#2. Giving oneself permission to write to begin with is the first enormous challenge. But you discover that this permission involves a requirement: To write about things that are difficult because they are, in fact, your subject.
Jonathan Galassi
#3. True greatness, true leadership, is achieved not by reducing men to one's service but in giving oneself in selfless service to them.
J. Oswald Sanders
#4. Still, a person who cannot express love is stopping the flow of life, is censoring where censorship is a form of self-indulgence, the fear of giving oneself away.
May Sarton
#5. One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself - that is to say, risking oneself.If one cannot risk oneself, then one is spimply incapable of giving
James Baldwin
#6. Doing one thing at a time and giving oneself wholly to doing it is the most efficient way one can possibly live, because there's no blockage in the organism whatsoever. When we live and work in that way, we are extremely efficient without being rushed. Life is very smooth.
Charlotte Joko Beck
#7. Every woman has the instinct, the propensity to profit from her charms, and there's a lot to be said for giving oneself without love, without pleasure.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#8. Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.
-Elinor Dashwood
Jane Austen
#9. Is great beauty in the simplicity of giving oneself to another in trust, and allowing them to hold you up.
Raine Miller
#10. And if the object of one's desire is a relationship with God, his blessing and love, then the struggle cannot fail but ends in that self-giving to God, in recognition of one's own weakness, which is overcome only by giving oneself over into God's merciful hands.
Benedict, Pope XVI
#11. To give oneself ernestly to securing righteousness and justice among the people, and while respecting the gods and demons, to keep aloof from them, that may be called wisdom.
Confucius
#12. Giving up on God and on oneself constitutes simultaneous surrender to the natural man.
Neal A. Maxwell
#13. The human contribution is the essential ingredient. It is only in the giving of oneself to others that we truly live.
Ethel Percy Andrus
#14. It is penance to work, to give oneself to others, to endure the pinpricks of community living.
Dorothy Day
#15. The outflow that comes from giving of oneself opens the door to spiritual unfoldment while the attitude of taking locks it.
Harold Klemp
#16. The most critical variable [to becoming a change-maker] is one's willingness to give oneself permission. To break the mental chains that make us small because everyone tells us we cannot.
Bill Drayton
#17. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only be setting someone free.
James A. Baldwin
#18. In order to give meaning to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
#19. Human rights means protecting another's freedom, seeing that the other person is also like oneself. Human rights is giving others security, letting them live.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
#20. When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. For the latter is absolutely not self-evident: one must make this point clear again and again, in spite of English shallowpates.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#21. Craving, not having, is the mother of a reckless giving of oneself.
Eric Hoffer
#22. The essence of leadership is not giving things or even providing visions. It is offering oneself and one's spirit.
Lee Bolman
#23. Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is best.
C.S. Lewis
#24. It is sometimes a point of as much cleverness to know to make good use of advice from others as to be able give good advice to oneself.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#25. Surrender is to give oneself up to the original cause of one's being.
Ramana Maharshi
#26. If one knows the truth that all that one gives to others is giving only to oneself, who indeed will not be a virtuous person and perform the kind act of giving to others? Since everyone is one's own Self, whoever does whatever to whomever is doing it only to himself.
Ramana Maharishi
#27. One has to give a great deal of oneself to animals if one is to get the best out of them.
Barbara Woodhouse
#28. Only by taking responsibility for oneself, to the greatest extent possible, can one ever be free, and only a free person can make responsible choices - between right and wrong, saving and spending, giving or taking.
Paul Ryan
#29. But the distinction is important and must be made: the highest virtue is not to give or to take. It is to share. And what I didn't understand most of my life is that sharing includes serving oneself. It is a subtle distinction, one too subtle for most adults, though most children understand it.
Robert Peate
#30. I do think the author ought to be able to give a good reason for the way things are in his poem. Not a bad question to ask oneself.
James Dickey
#31. The goal of the Christian life is the pursuit of an intimate knowledge of God that leads to a greater estimation of His worth, a greater satisfaction and joy in His person, and a greater giving of oneself for His glory. As
Paul David Washer
#32. While the word charity connotes a single act of giving, justice speaks to right living, of aligning oneself with the world in a way that sustains rather than exploits the rest of creation.
Rachel Held Evans
#33. Your manner of life now is already determining your life in those years of old age and retirement, without your realizing it even, and perhaps without your giving enough thought to it. One must therefore prepare oneself for retirement.
Paul Tournier
#34. To be rich is to give; to give nothing is to be poor; to live is to love; to love nothing is to be dead; to be happy is to devote oneself; to exist only for oneself is to damn oneself, and to exile oneself to hell.
Eliphas Levi
#36. The world somehow is always the same. The only thing that can improve is the individual life. One can live a good life. One can give life a meaning. Either by drinking oneself to death or by painting oneself to death or by loving oneself to death.
Odd Nerdrum
#37. May we give as the Savior gave. To give of oneself is a holy gift. We give as a remembrance of all the Savior has given.
Thomas S. Monson
#38. Sensual pleasures are, or should be, the culmination of physical desires combined with an intellectual and emotional decision, a giving of oneself, body and spirit, in a bond of trust and respect.
R.A. Salvatore
#39. Some individuals have developed such strong internal standards that they no longer need the opinion of others to judge whether they have performed a task well or not. The ability to give objective feedback to oneself is in fact the mark of the expert.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#40. Explaining one's recent loss as more of a continuous journey rather than a dead end, giving one of the invaluable opportunity to gain strength and learn about oneself, and thereby turning this terribly tragic affair into something hugely positive.
Cecelia Ahern
#41. 16 Oppressing the poor to enrich oneself, and giving to the rich - both lead only to poverty.
Anonymous
#42. Work is fundamental to the dignity of a person ... It gives one the ability to maintain oneself, one's family, to contribute to the growth of one's own nation.
Pope Francis
#43. Correcting oneself is correcting the whole world. The Sun is simply bright. It does not correct anyone. Because it shines, the whole world is full of light. Transforming yourself is a means of giving light to the whole world.
Ramana Maharshi
#45. Love consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom - it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one's freedom on behalf of another.
Pope John Paul II
#46. You might not have thought it possible to give birth to others before one has given birth to oneself, but I assure you it is quite possible, it has been done; I offer myself in evidence as Exhibit A.
Sheila Ballantyne
#47. One of the things that evangelicals do really, really well is to make giving a joyous, social enterprise. Too often, the world sees giving as a burden, a sacrifice, when in fact it's more like an opportunity to help others and oneself at the same time.
Nicholas Kristof
#48. A holiday gives one a chance to look backward and forward; to reset oneself by an inner compass.
May Sarton
