Self Quotes - Page 16

The defeat of the mind is the defeat of self

I needed a break...from myself.

Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.

In that tremendous flash of freedom, on my way to do The Thing for the first time, sanctioned by Almighty Harry, I receded, faded back into the scenery of my own dark self, whole the other me crouched and growled. I would do It at last, do what I had been created to do. And I did.

When a man does not dwell in self, then things will of themselves reveal their forms to him. His movement is like that of water, his stillness like that of a mirror, his responses like those of an echo.

Your real self may be hiding somewhere, look for it within, when you find yourself, you can freely be what you want to be.

I just want to live my own life instead of everyone else’s version of it.

Once I was free; there was no cage that could bind me, and I had yet to create my box of numbness within my mind to be my silent protector.

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

Sometimes, being true to yourself means changing your mind. Self changes, and you follow.

I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.

To have been always what I am - and so changed from what I was.

To be always what I am - and so changed from what I was.

You know that smell, when you put your nose up to a pine tree?" I told her I did perfectly. "No matter how long it has been, you always will. Like you are storing a part of that tree in your own body. ... Everything stays true. You are yourself, no matter how much you have to change.

It follows that I must accept myself for what I am before I can deliberately change it.

No good can come from beating ourselves up for falling down - for feeling unhappy when we want to feel just the opposite.

It's funny, because I had thought, living through those first two months after the night at the lake, that the great crisis was about What I Was or Who I'd Become or What Terrible Thing Was Wrong With Me (and About to Go Wronger) and Why All Was Changed As a Result. But I was still struggling against the idea that all *was* changed.

He wondered if anyone really ever changed, or if stuff just piled on and on, covering up, but never erasing all the different parts. How deep would you have to dig to find who you started out as?

And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is "me"?