Top 100 Quotes About Self-cultivation
#1. We live with many thoughts, emotions, and habits, but at the same time we have other eyes, another mind capable of watching all of these things. Those who practice self-cultivation find that mind; they live with it and they die with it.
Ilchi Lee
#2. I honestly felt no envy or resentment, only astonishment at how much of a world there was out there and how much of it others already knew. The agenda for self-cultivation that had been set for my classmates by their teachers and parents was something I'd have to develop for myself.
Sonia Sotomayor
#3. And finally - he was neither able nor willing to prevent it - the self-loathing dammed up inside him spilled over and gushed out, gushed out of glaring eyes that grew ever grimmer, angrier, beneath the rim of his cap, flooding the outside world as perfect, vulgar hate.
Patrick Suskind
#4. You want to be loved? Love yourself first and passionately. Forgive yourself readily. Care for every part of you. Only when you love yourself do you have love to give to others.
Toni Sorenson
#5. Imponderable Sir, I presume from some if not all of your many reputations that you might prefer honest and convinced unbelief to the hypocritical and self-interested affectation of faith or the smoking tributes of bloody altars.
Christopher Hitchens
#6. Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.
Josef Pieper
#7. On the other hand, there is a certain advantage in traveling with someone who has a reputation for shooting rather than being shot: as Keram said, in a self-satisfied way, they might kill me, but they would know that, if I was with him, there would be unpleasantness afterwards.
Freya Stark
#8. Self-realization is a strange term. You don't actually realize your 'self'. If anything, you go away. The caterpillar enters the cocoon of meditation: A butterfly emerges - metamorphosis.
Frederick Lenz
#9. The attempt to force human beings to despise themselves is what I call hell.
Andre Malraux
#10. Humankind is now caught up, as though in a train of gears, at the heart of a continually accelerating vortex of self-totalization.
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
#12. I try to write about a woman finding her self-respect, valuing herself, and liking herself again. But what one desperately wants now is to write a proper novel.
Kate O'Mara
#13. This is not the case. There is nothing that is not the Self. The Self does not have to be realized.
Frederick Lenz
#14. Do not tell me what to do, tell me what you do. Do not tell me what is good for me, tell me what is good for you. If, at the same time, you reveal the you in me, if you become a mirror to my inner self, then you have made a reader and a friend.
George A. Sheehan
#15. 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.
Koren Zailckas
#16. Criticism is valuable ... and self-congratulatory experiences are not.
Harold Prince
#19. It is curious how an age of public self-revelation, and of the use of psychological jargon, should also be an age when self-examination is rarely practised.
Anthony Daniels
#20. I reckon it does take a powerful trust in the Lord to guard a fellow, though sometimes I think that Cora's a mite over-cautious, like she was trying to crowd the other folks away and get in closer than anybody else.
William Faulkner
#21. This watching through cool intent eyes and delicately adjusting one factor or another till a man's fundamental instinct for self-preservation cracks, is savagery in its most pure, most polished and most highly evolved form.
Tana French
#23. Friendship gives us the strength to turn from lambs into lions.
Stephen Richards
#24. We don't take on Google Glass or the self-driving car project or Project Loon unless we think that on a risk-adjusted basis, it's worth Google's money to do it.
Astro Teller
#26. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.
George Eliot
#27. The great men of all areas of humanity's activities never tried to be a better version of someone else. They simply brought to the table a full life's cultivation of their particular skill sets, experiences, and passions, and we must do the same.
Chris Matakas
#28. Self-defense was an accepted motive for murder.
Farrah Naseem
#29. So if I were talking to a young writer, I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.
John Berryman
#30. The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self.
Novalis
#31. Self-discipline is an act of cultivation. It require you to connect today's actions to tomorrow's results. There's a season for sowing a season for reaping. Self-discipline helps you know which is which.
Gary Ryan Blair
#32. Our self- development is all about cultivating the traits that we need to achieve our life purpose, success and to carry out our mission
Sunday Adelaja
#33. Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#34. Pride is a deeply rooted ailment of the soul. The penalty is misery; the remedy lies in the sincere, life-long cultivation of humility, which means true self-evaluation and a proper perspective toward past, present and future.
Robert Gordis
#35. As a society of unbelief, Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and and self-expression.
Stanley Hauerwas
#36. Cultivation of positive emotions, including self-love and self-respect, strengthens our inner resources and opens us to a broader range of thoughts and actions.
Sharon Salzberg
#38. Place your concentration in the center of your palm. Concentrate on making that part of your palm warmer than the rest of your hand. After a while, compare the temperature in the center of your palm to another part of your body.
Ilchi Lee
#39. In order not to cut out a large part of one's private life, the creative work should not swallow up every other form of self-expression. But that is the most complicated thing.
Elena Ferrante
#40. Nothing can touch the one who is oodasin (one unperturbed by worldly life). After attaining Knowledge of the Self, if one applies awareness of the Self, one can remain unperturbed (oodasin).
Dada Bhagwan
#41. Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward
Patricia Sampson
#42. The main characteristics of effective leadership are intelligence, integrity or loyalty, mystique, humor, discipline, courage, self sufficieny and confidence.
James Fisher
#43. I could never do a job that entailed complicating people's lives
Frank Healy
#44. This was misery that could not yield, for he sorrowed for a time he could not return to, and a self he would never again be.
Robin Hobb
#45. She would never be caught unprepared again, she swore to herself. She would never trust. Never love. Never put faith in other human beings again. She would learn all she could of the shape and substance of the world, and she would find a way to survive in it.
David Anthony Durham
#46. You do not need permission to be you. Just be your authentic, brilliant, one-soul-only self. You are a marvel. Act like it!
Toni Sorenson
#47. I brought you here to tell you this: sometimes what we are searching for does not exist. We may sacrifice for it, even bleed for it, but it was never meant to be ours.
Esther Dalseno
#48. No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party who ignores her sex.
Susan B. Anthony
#49. No man who worships education has got the best out of education ... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.
G.K. Chesterton
#50. To no one, he knew, not even to Willem. But he'd had years to learn how to keep his thoughts to himself; unlike his friends, he had learned not to share evidence of his oddities as a way to distinguish himself from others, although he was happy and proud that they shared theirs with him
Hanya Yanagihara
#51. Those who wish to sit, shut their eyes,
and meditate to know if the world's true or lies,
may do so. It's their choice. But I meanwhile
with hungry eyes that can't be satisfied
shall take a look at the world in broad daylight.
Rabindranath Tagore
#52. I don't need anyone to hold me, I can hold my own.
Ani DiFranco
#53. A woman's sense of self is defined through her feelings and the quality of her relationships.
John Gray
#54. There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. History reveals men's deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, unpenetrated and unguessed.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
#55. An interesting piece of work, freely chosen, which has the virtue of inducing concentration rather than fatigue, adds to the child's energies and mental capacities, and leads him to self-mastery.
Maria Montessori
#56. Mature striving is linked to long-range goals. Thus, the process of becoming is largely a matter of organizing transitory impulses into a pattern of striving and interest in which the element of self-awareness plays a large part.
Gordon W. Allport
#58. If love means that one person absorbs the other, then no real relationship exists any more. Love evaporates; there is nothing left to love. The integrity of self is gone.
Ann Oakley
#59. Why do you like me more when I was prouder and wilder, more full of words, yet emptier?
Friedrich Holderlin
#60. To have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing herself and her self respect - well, that's a trophy enough for a guy's ego, huh?
Jerry Spinelli
#61. In elections in Iceland, I have always been an abstainer. It seems like politics is such a small bundle of self-important people, who don't have much to do with things I'm interested in.
Bjork
#62. I don't say I'm not magnetic to try and sound self-deprecating. I'm just not. Though I actually love people. I would like to meet more people. I know no one.
Kristen Stewart
#63. All you can be is you. Your true self shines with more beauty than your mind can ever know.
Sasha Martin
#64. In all honesty, if somebody asked me the secret of auditioning for Americans, I don't know. Often, I do what's called self-taping for America. I go over there quite a lot to sit in a room and do stuff in front of people. You feel like a performing monkey. It's bizarre.
David Wenham
#65. I killed the Google Alert I used to have on myself two years ago. I don't need any more information about myself. I get more than enough of that just by being me.
Lev Grossman
#66. It is naive to think that self-assertiveness is easy. To live self-assertively
which means to live authentically
is an act of high courage. That is why so many people spend the better part of their lives in hiding
from others and also from themselves.
Nathaniel Branden
#67. Every situation you conquer, you find the strength, your never knew you had.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#68. Radical self-care is what we've been longing for, desperate for, our entire lives-friendship with our own hearts.
Anne Lamott
#69. We learn about life by exploring the texture and depth of space that composes our private inner world. In solitude we revisit our wounded feelings, sins, doubts, and deepest despair, replay poignant memories of loved ones, project what we are becoming, and ascertain the purpose of our being.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#70. Sin, on the contrary, is the pursuit of legitimate self-regarding interests at the expense of the neighbor, by spending our time and talents figuring out ways of exploiting them.
Frederick Nymeyer
#72. Anything that grows is, by definition, alive. Washington, D.C. was no exception. As a living organism, the Federal Government's number one job was self-preservation. Any threat to its existence had to be dealt with.
Brad Thor
#73. We must bring light to as many people as possible. Who has time to indulge in self-pity or guilt? In advanced self-giving you have no time for this. You just push these emotions out.
Frederick Lenz
#74. Lean into the sharp points and fully experience them. The essence of bravery is being without self-deception. Wisdom is inherent in (understanding) emotions.
Pema Chodron
#75. When we can overcome our own personal battles, we can live confidently in situations we would have otherwise been too weak to handle.
Tanya R. Liverman
#76. You know, you kind of lose some self-confidence after having kids because you'll never be the way you were. But I feel good.
Debi Mazar
#77. Yoga is about balance, both mind and body, as well as increasing self-awareness, with by-products of better strength and flexibility.
M.E. Dahkid
#78. You need to remember that. If you're to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#79. because then they don't have to struggle with the need to die to the ego-driven self and become a humble servant of all people, which is what Jesus requires. It's much
Chuck Queen
#80. Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.
Bryant H. McGill
#81. 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.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Walter Scott
#82. Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness.
John Sterling
#83. You need to be curious, competitive, creative, stubborn, self-confident, skeptical, patient and be lucky to win a Nobel.
Ivar Giaever
#84. And there I suddenly found my articulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that's when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor?
Cary Grant
#85. I was 26 when I went to my first acting class. I'm naturally quite shy. I'm a quite private person. There's this really strange acting class in New York called Black Nexxus. For someone who's slightly shy or self-conscious, it's the most frightening thing you can do.
Hannah Ware
#86. Take control of your future by taking a choice of starting it right now.
Auliq Ice
#87. Oh Lord, I've been so selfish, so consumed with myself I haven't been able to see anyone else's pain but my own. I've let anger blind me. I've let self-righteousness stop me in my tracks and keep me from having the kind of relationship with you that I want. I need to let it go.
Lynette Eason
#88. Extroversion: response to reward Neuroticism: response to threat Conscientiousness: response to inhibition (self-control, planning) Agreeableness: regard for others Openness to experience: breadth of mental associations
Gretchen Rubin
#89. The Self in you is the same as the Self Universal. Whatever powers are manifested throughout the world, those powers exist in germ, in latency, in you ... If you realize the unity of the Self amid the diversities of the Not-Self, then Yoga Will not seem an impossible thing to you.
Annie Besant
#90. I gave a silent prayer of thanks that I didn't seem to be lousy. I had probably been too filthy for any self-respecting louse to take up residence.
Patrick Rothfuss
#91. If you don't find yourself and purpose, the world will be worse for it
Sunday Adelaja
#92. When you believe that other people think highly of you, your level of self-acceptance and self-esteem goes straight up.
Brian Tracy
#93. I'm really happy to have the chance to talk about the editing process. It's something that I think doesn't get the weight it deserves, especially with the rise of self-publishing.
Sarah Dessen
#94. To yield to the threat or actual use of violence is a surrender of one's self respect and religious conviction.
Mahatma Gandhi
#95. The measure of self-motivation in a young person will become the best way to predict upward mobility.
Tyler Cowen
#97. I regard myself as a religious ... the temper of my mind as religious, and because I regard the temper of my mind as religious, I am profoundly skeptical about any form of human authority, any form of human self-importance.
Malcolm Muggeridge
#98. Most of us do not like to look inside ourselves for the same reason we don't like to open a letter that has bad news.
Fulton J. Sheen
#99. The foundation stone of all philosophy is self-knowledge and being true to thy self. A person must address an inner necessity in order to realize the fundamental truth about oneself, seek self-improvement, and gain knowledge through experience.
Kilroy J. Oldster
