Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.
The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.
A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.
I prefer a man who will burn the flag and then wrap himself in the Constitution to a man who will burn the Constitution and then wrap himself in the flag.
Now I will say this to every sinner, though he should think himself to be the worst sinner who ever lived: cry to the Lord and seek Him while He may be found. A throne of grace is a place fitted for you. By simple faith, go to your Savior, for He is the throne of grace.
Let him that hath no power of patience retire within himself, though even there he will have to put up with himself.
Logotherapy sees the human patient in all his humanness. I step up to the core of the patient’s being. And that is a being in search of meaning, a being that is transcending himself, a being capable of acting in love for others.
A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
Pictures can be devastating. Who allowed John Kerry to get himself photographed windsurfing in a flowered swimsuit? Anyone in the real world in that operation?
Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.
Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.
He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.
No partner in a love relationship… should feel that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable.
My favorite movie is ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’ with Clint Eastwood, a guy who gets his family killed by the bad guys then goes on a journey of revenge, eventually discovering himself – very existential.
A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.
There is a law that man should love his neighbor as himself. In a few hundred years it should be as natural to mankind as breathing or the upright gait; but if he does not learn it he must perish.
A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.
The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.
Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.
I saw ‘Taxi Driver,’ and ‘Taxi Driver’ kind of saved my life. The scene where Robert De Niro is looking at himself in the mirror saying, ‘You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Who the hell else are you talkin’ to?’ That’s the scene that changed my life by changing my attitude about acting.
Everyone makes a greater effort to hurt other people than to help himself.
Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.
Research shows that the climate of an organization influences an individual’s contribution far more than the individual himself.
Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand.
The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.
To my surprise, the more I searched about Qi Xiangfu, the more I found of a life lived partly online. He once wrote a short memoir in which he described himself in the third person, with the formality usually reserved for China’s most famous writers.
Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.
Theory states that Allah’s law is cruel and unfair, but Allah himself has said that his law is indeed fair.
Man seeks to learn, and man kills himself because of the loss of cohesion in his religious society; he does not kill himself because of his learning. It is certainly not the learning he acquires that disorganizes religion; but the desire for knowledge wakens because religion becomes disorganized.
If a teacher does not involve himself, his values, his commitments, in the course of discussion, why should the students?
To preach more than half an hour, a man should be an angel himself or have angels for hearers.
It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.
Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.
Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.
The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.
He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there’s another dog.
The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
A man’s own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself.
The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance.
Man does find in Nature deliverance from himself, oblivion of his past, with peace and purity!
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is.
The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.
Unless a man believes in himself and makes a total commitment to his career and puts everything he has into it – his mind, his body, his heart – what’s life worth to him?
‘Great Expectations’, in short, is a more damning account of the mess Dickens himself had made of love than any denunciation on behalf of the outraged wives club could ever be.
Now he must not go the wrong way round the circuit, and unless he can spin himself stationary through 360 degrees I fail to see how he can avoid doing so.
My dad was a soul fan and a singer himself, and he loved vocal harmony, stuff like the Beach Boys and Motown like the Four Tops, which was a big influence on me.
A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.
I don’t think Hank Greenberg thought of himself as the first Jewish baseball player – he was a baseball player who happened to be Jewish. I’m an artist who happens to be Latin.
I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media.
I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.
The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.
Star quality is one of the most difficult things to describe. It emanates from the person, and he may not even understand it himself. It’s a quality that separates the star from the rest of us.
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
Every day without fail one should consider himself as dead. There is a saying of the elders that goes, ‘Step from under the eaves and you’re a dead man. Leave the gate and the enemy is waiting.’ This is not a matter of being careful. It is to consider oneself as dead beforehand.
Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.
I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.
Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.
An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person’s main task in life – becoming a better person.
