We Only Have Ourselves Quotes

#1. Once in a dream I saw a snake swallowing its own tail, it swallowed and swallowed until it got halfway round, and there it stopped and there it stayed, it was stuffed with its own self. Some fix, that.
We only have ourselves to go on, and it's enough ...

Charles Bukowski

#2. Our response has been, 'Well, let's then make an effort to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to sit around the table.' That hasn't happened. So we only have ourselves to blame for this crisis.

Abdallah II Of Jordan

#3. Sometimes memory is the only gift we give ourselves and the only hope we have of finding our way home.

Harley King

#4. When all our efforts have come to nothing, we naturally tend to doubt not just ourselves, but also whether God is just. At those moments, our only hope is to seek every evidence that God is just, by communing with the people we know who are strongest in faith.

Bill Moyers

#5. The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right here, is our first step. Once we have held ourselves with kindness, we can touch others in a vital and healing way.

Tara Brach

#6. We are always ourselves, no matter where we go. That's what the poem is saying, I think. We have to recognize it, and make what we can here. This world, great as it is, is only just another biome we have to live in.

Kim Stanley Robinson

#7. When we stand, we do so not only for ourselves, but also for countless others who have similar stories but may never have an opportunity to be witnessed.

William Keepin

#8. The point of telling our stories, even if only to ourselves, is to help us resurrect the parts we have buried. When we unearth them, even if it's difficult, we can integrate them into our sense of who we are. Often in our buried self our true power lies.

Helen LaKelly Hunt

#9. First you will feel your inner transformation in your outer relationships, and then you will go deep. Then only will you begin to feel something inner. But we have a settled attitude about ourselves. We don't want to look into relationship at all, because then the naked face comes up.

Rajneesh

#10. We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves.

Jane Yolen

#11. We state and commend the faith only in so far as we go out and put ourselves inside the doubts of the doubters, the questions of the questioners and the loneliness of those who have lost their way.

John R.W. Stott

#12. I think language is the most important thing that human beings have ever accomplished, and the only thing that's really going to get us all out of the troubles that we find ourselves in.

Paul Bettany

#13. You have to learn to love yourself before you can love someone else. Because it's only when we love ourselves that we feel worthy of someone else's love.

Alyssa B. Sheinmel

#14. What we have not had to decipher, to elucidate by our own efforts, what was clear before we looked at it, is not ours. From ourselves comes only that which we drag forth from the obscurity which lies within us, that which to others is unknown.

Marcel Proust

#15. Religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thingthat it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.

William James

#16. We all live under the constant threat of our own annihilation. Only by the most outrageous violation of ourselves have we achieved our capacity to live in relative adjustment to a civilization apparently driven to its own destruction.

R.D. Laing

#17. If we now find ourselves looking down on the cheap and convenient, it is only because we now have better things which are affordable.

Julian Baggini

#18. When we come to Christ, we're no longer the most important person in the world to us; Christ is. Instead of living only for ourselves, we have a higher goal: to live for Jesus.

Billy Graham

#19. Of all the questions about the future of leadership that we can raise for ourselves, we can be certain in our answer to only one: 'Who will lead us?' The answer, of course, is that we will be lead by those we have taught, and they will lead us as we have shown them they should.

William C. Richardson

#20. Recovery is not only fun, it is simple. It is not always easy, but it is simple. It is based on a premise many of us have forgotten or never learned: Each person is responsible for him- or herself. It involves learning one new behavior that we will devote ourselves to: taking care of ourselves.

Melody Beattie

#21. We set ourselves to achieve a society that would be maximally tolerant. But that resolve not only gives maximum scope to the activities of those who have set themselves to achieve the maximally intolerant society. It also ... paralyses our powers of resistance to them.

David Stove

#22. By accepting what the external structures have told us we need to do, we have given the power of our realities and ourselves to others. It is time to tell a new story for women, and that can only start with women.

Zainab Salbi

#23. I really don't know why we need a whole month dedicated to blacks. It's not like they're the only ones that suffered. I mean, what about us whites? We're the ones that have to deal with these monkeys everyday, but you don't see us demanding a whole month to ourselves.

Zach Braff

#24. The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed to pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask ourselves, 'Are these words true?' If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go. At the second gate, we ask, 'Are the necessary?' At the last gate, we ask, 'Are they kind?'

Eknath Easwaran

#25. All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.

Brandon Sanderson

#26. But if we hide ourselves away, afraid to grow and learn, we might wake up in the flames of the ignorance that burns and we'll never be much more than only casualties of war in a struggle we can't win if we have no faith to begin. We've got to tip the lid and let some sunlight in.

Dawud Wharnsby Ali

#27. The only obligation we have in any lifetime is to be true to ourselves.

Richard Bach

#28. We only need to convince ourselves of our capacity and the game of life is done. We all have games, but we often play the games of others.

Robin Sacredfire

#29. Because when we lose someone we've allowed to be our whole life, we find that we have very little left to sustain us. Not only have we distanced ourselves from God, but we've lost something of ourselves in the process.

Lawana Blackwell

#30. I have learned that it is by serving that we learn how to serve. When we engaged in the service of our fellowmen, not only do our deeds assist them but we put our own problems in fresher perspective. When we concern ourselves more with others, there is less time to be concerned with ourselves

Spencer W. Kimball

#31. Crucial insights that we need to convey to ourselves can often be received only at night, like city church bells that have to wait until dark to be heard. During

Alain De Botton

#32. We cannot fling ourselves into the blank future; we can only call up images from the past. This being so, the important principle follows, that how many images we have largely depends on how much past we have.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#33. Self-improvement can have temporary results, but lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves as the source of wisdom and compassion.

Pema Chodron

#34. Voiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear.

George Washington

#35. We must humble ourselves before [others] so we may learn from what others have lived. It is only when we have added their expertise to our own that we can truly excel towards our most ambitious goals and reach our fullest potential.

A.J. Darkholme

#36. By art alone we can get out of ourselves, find out what another person sees of this universe which is not the same as ours ... Thanks to art, instead of seeing only one world, we see it multiplied, and we have as many different worlds at our disposition as there are original artists.

Marcel Proust

#37. There exists, if I am not mistaken, an entire world which is the totality of mathematical truths, to which we have access only with our mind, just as a world of physical reality exists, the one like the other independent of ourselves, both of divine creation.

Charles Hermite

#38. The first time I was asked whether women can "have it all" was at the Miss America pageant. I said no. I didn't mean that women shouldn't fully pursue their dreams, only that we need to be honest with ourselves.

Gretchen Carlson

#39. If Atheists are lonely and downtrodden, we have only ourselves to blame. Numerically, we are strong. Let's start punching our weight.

Tom Flynn

#40. How then can we change being? By applying the knowledge of the Work through self-observation to ourselves. And remember that you do not change by being told what to do. You only change through seeing what you have to do when you realize what your being is like.

Maurice Nicoll

#41. If we will only surrender ourselves utterly to the Lord, and will trust Him perfectly, we shall find our souls "mounting up with wings as eagles" to the "heavenly places" in Christ Jesus, where earthly annoyances or sorrows have no power to disturb us.

Hannah Whitall Smith

#42. Nothing outside the will can hinder or harm the will; it can only harm itself. If then we accept this, and, when things go amiss, are inclined to blame ourselves, remembering that judgment alone can disturb our peace and constancy, I swear to you by all the gods that we have made progress.

Epictetus

#43. Lives are rivers. We imagine we can direct their paths, though in the end there's but one destination, and we end up being true to ourselves only because we have no choice.

Richard Russo

#44. But to this Orc-work such a life as we lead has brought us. Lawless and fruitless all our deeds have been, serving only ourselves, and feeding hate in our hearts.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#45. If I had had to write only about imaginary people, I would have had to close up my typewriter. I wrote about my life in less and less disguise as I grew older, and finally with no disguise - except the disguise we create for ourselves, which is self-deception.

William Maxwell

#46. We fail to be disciples only because we do not decide to be. We do not intend to be disciples. It is the power of the decision and the intention over our life that is missing. We should apprentice ourselves to Jesus in a solemn moment, and we should let those around us know that we have done so.

Dallas Willard

#47. When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death - ourselves.

Eda J. LeShan

#48. We have our little space and our little time. We need to use it as best we can. We need to make memories, even if only for ourselves.

Neville Stocks

#49. We only have one life to live, and must go on with it to the end, that if we feel it is meaningless, then we ourselves must give it meaning.

Susan Moody

#50. We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.

William James

#51. We were born to be friends. We both knew it. The Australian Aborigines have the traditional belief that a complete human being comprises two parts that are split before birth, that we spend our lives seeking the other part to make ourselves whole again, and that only the lucky succeed in doing so.

John Grant

#52. Strange as it seems, we appear to be the only species who do not have an instinctive ability to know what food we should eat to stay healthy. All other animals do. We consider ourselves a superior species, yet we are destroying the only planet we have, endangering our very existence.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

#53. We have to take care of our own game. There's only one place we've got to stick up for ourselves and that's the pitch.

Andrew Flintoff

#54. We have faith in the potentialities of others, of ourselves, and of mankind because, and only to the degree to which, we have experienced the growth of our own potentialities, the reality of growth in ourselves, the strength of our own power of reason and love.

Erich Fromm

#55. We don't have time to be ourselves. We only have time to be happy.

Albert Camus

#56. Truth is that we all need facts we cannot continue to eat only the food that is given to us. Sometimes we have to feed ourselves otherwise we set our self up for dependency on the wrong nutrition without realizing that we were being poisoned the whole time.

R. Lewis

#57. What we never really comprehend, or don't want to comprehend, is that this happens outside us, that we ourselves have no part in it, that we are only that which grows and dies, as blind as the waves in the sea are blind.

Karl Ove Knausgard

#58. When we get more houses than we can live in, more cars than we can ride in, more food than we can eat ourselves, the only way of getting richer is by cutting off those who don't have enough.

Nelson Algren

#59. Nature photography ... that acknowledges what is wrong, is admittedly sometimes hard to bear - it has to encompass our mistakes. Yet in the long run, it is important; in order to endure our age of apocalypse, we have to be reconciled not only to avalanche and hurricane, but to ourselves.

Robert Adams

#60. We're hungry for acceptance - from ourselves even more than from others - for love, for fulfillment, for peace. We're hungry for a life we think we don't deserve or can't have, for the person we know we can be if only we'd give ourselves the chance.

Mary DeTurris Poust

#61. I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, of this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.

C.S. Lewis

#62. From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art.

Michel Foucault

#63. I pray that you will understand the words of Jesus, "Love one another as I have loved you." Ask yourself "How has he loved me? Do I really love others in the same way?" Unless this love is among us, we can kill ourselves with work and it will only be work, not love. Work without love is slavery.

Mother Teresa

#64. Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.

Paulo Coelho

#65. I learned that it was in hard times that people usually changed the course of their life; in good times, they frequently only talked about change. Hard times forced them to overcome the doubts that normally gave them pause.It surprised me how often we hold ourselves back until we have no choice.

Po Bronson

#66. Life should be good - Life should be very, very good - and the only duty we have to the dead is to make it good for ourselves and other people.

Jackie French

#67. We can have faith in the future only if we have faith in ourselves.

John F. Kennedy

#68. In my eyes, concepts of theology have only as much value as they are able to interpret experience. It seems to me that we have long reached the point where we theologians only talk to ourselves and debate with our own history of concepts.

Eugen Drewermann

#69. I have the same problem as Marilyn. We attract people the way honey does bees, but they're generally the wrong kind of people. People who want something from us - if only our energy. We need a period of being alone to become ourselves.

Montgomery Clift

#70. Let us first fulfill Christ's injunction ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies of our children, and they are not our children, but our enemies, and we have made them our enemies ourselves.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

#71. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

James Baldwin

#72. If we remember what we have been called to and devote ourselves to praying for what is best, we may care a little less about the opinions of a secular world and devote ourselves more scrupulously to serving the only Master whose opinion matters.

D. A. Carson

#73. We are doorways, openings into something greater than ourselves, something that we don't understand and will never understand. We have nothing precious in and of ourselves. We are only precious in that we are part of something that is too big to know.

Eleanor Morse

#74. Only a child believes his rulers have his best interest at heart," he said. "We would be wise to disabuse ourselves of such illusions.

Julie Wu

#75. Nothing paralyzes our lives like the attitude that things can never change. We need to remind ourselves that God can change things. Outlook determines outcome. If we see only the problems, we will be defeated; but if we see the possibilities in the problems, we can have victory.

Warren W. Wiersbe

#76. The only person we have the right or the power to forgive is ourselves. For everything else there is the Art of Acceptance.

Rebecca O'Dwyer Centred Woman

#77. Experience is the only teacher we have. We may talk and reason all our lives, but we shall not understand a word of truth until we experience it ourselves.

Swami Vivekananda

#78. Yes, sex is troublesome and beautiful. And only when we drop our expectations, and know that we'll have moments of great sex and moments when our sexuality confounds, pains, or infuriates us, will we be liberated to enjoy it in a way that's true to ourselves.

Alexandra Katehakis

#79. But it's only when we allow ourselves to get lost that we can have the opportunity to find and be found.

Brandan Roberston

#80. If I could prescribe a single rule for looking at a work of art it would be to enjoy it. If we're honest with ourselves, we have to admit we enjoy our tears just as much as we enjoy our laughter. The only moments of life that are a bore are when we don't care one way or another.

Vincent Price

#81. We made much less happy by the kindness of a great writer, which strictly speaking we find only in his books, than we suffer from the hostility of a woman whom we have not chosen for her intelligence, but whom we cannot stop ourselves from loving.

Marcel Proust

#82. The first problem, of course, is that we haven't learned to love ourselves. That's the first problem. We can only give to another what we have to give. And if we have no love over here, we can't give it over there.

Neale Donald Walsch

#83. The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for the same mistake. The rest of the animals pay only once for every mistake they make. But not us. We have a powerful memory. We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves.

Miguel Ruiz

#84. We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.

Jeffrey Kluger

#85. I'm just becoming more and more aware of this truly profound responsibility that we carry as individuals. And it's a responsibility not only to ourselves and to our families, but to the billions of people who still have to come in the future who will be dealing with our legacy.

Chris Jordan

#86. I've been thinking it over for years. While we
loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. But people don't
love forever. A time came when I should have found the words to keep her with me, only
I couldn't. - Grant

Albert Camus

#87. Through their deeds, the dead of battle have spoken more eloquently for themselves than any of the living ever could. But we can only honor them by rededicating ourselves to the cause for which they gave a last full measure of devotion.

Abraham Lincoln

#88. In our mental outlook we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact of sin as the only explanation as to why Jesus Christ came, and the explanation of the grief and sorrow in life.

Oswald Chambers

#89. If our mind is in conflict, not balanced with our body and with the needs of the soul, then there is a fundamental disunity in our life. Only if we have unity within ourselves, we can create unity in the world around us. You can't give something you don't have, even if you have all good intentions

Radhanath Swami

#90. Now the only thing we have on our hands is too much time, and we're turning on ourselves.

Adam Carolla

#91. If we invest in researching and developing energy technology, we'll do some real good in the long run, rather than just making ourselves feel good today. But climate change is not the only challenge of the 21st century, and for many other global problems we have low-cost, durable solutions.

Bjorn Lomborg

#92. In our day-to-day actions, it is often the small and simple things that will have a long-lasting impact (Alma 37:6-7). What we say, how we act, and how we choose to react will influence not only ourselves but also those around us. We can build up, or we can tear down.

Per G. Malm

#93. We think we have some kind of privileged access to our own motives and intentions. In fact we have no clear insight into what moves us to live as we do. The stories we tell ourselves are like the messages that appear on Ouija boards. If we are authors of our lives, it is only in retrospect.

John N. Gray

#94. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies.

C.S. Lewis

#95. But all our attempts have proved to be singularly ineffectual, and will continue to do so as long as we try to convince ourselves and the world that it is only they, our opponents, who are all wrong, morally and philosophically.

C. G. Jung

#96. Discipline, for the Christian, begins with the body. We have only one. It is this body that is the primary material given to us for sacrifice. We cannot give our hearts to God and keep our bodies for ourselves.

Elisabeth Elliot

#97. And perhaps we have reason to be very grateful that, both as children and long afterwards, we are never allowed to guess how the absorbing pursuit of the moment will appear, not only to others, but to ourselves, a very short time hence.

Kenneth Grahame

#98. We have both lost ourselves and created something else, something that exists only as an interlacing of the two of us.

Robert James Waller

#99. It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good heart whatever they might have to say.

Mahatma Gandhi

#100. Essentially, he taught that it doesn't make sense to upset ourselves about what is beyond our control. We don't get a choice about what hand we are dealt in this life. The only choice we have is our attitude about the cards we hold and the finesse with which we play our hand.

Sylvia Boorstein