I force myself to lock away the fear.
But I've learned now that your hard work and dedication will pay off, if you dare to be different. Because why would I want to be anything other than myself?
Del agua mansa me libre Dios; que de la recia me guardare yo=--From smooth water God guard me; from rough, I can guard myself.
Tentanda via est qua me quoque possim / Tollere humo, victorque virum volitare per ora=--I too must attempt a way by which I may raise myself above the ground, and soar triumphant through the lips of men.
I am as you see me. I am happy and able because I allow myself to be happy. I learned young that being active breeds more activity. That the gift of studying is knowledge. That seeing grants sight. That if you don't feel anger, you won't be angry. Sadness and frustration, even tragedy, are inevitable, but that doesn't mean that happiness isn't there for us, for all of us. My secret is that I choose to be the person that I want to be. That I don't believe in destiny or predetermination, but in choice, and that each of us chooses to be the person we are. Whatever you want to be you can be; whatever you want to do you can do; wherever you want to go you can go. The world, and the life ahead, is ours for the taking. The future is unwritten, and you can make it whatever you want it to be.
From the beginning, I had a sense of destiny, as though my life was assigned to me by fate and had to be fulfilled. This gave me an inner security, and, though I could never prove to myself, it proved itself to me. I did not have the certainty, it had me.
With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on.
Lead me not into temptation... I can find it myself.
I feel very much like Dirac: the idea of a personal God is foreign to me. But we ought to remember that religion uses language in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science. True, we are inclined to think that science deals with information about objective facts, and poetry with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to adopt the same criteria of truth as science. But I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't get us very far.
When I read, I feel emotion all on my own. Emotion no living person is making me feel. To me, it almost seems more real, because I know that those characters can’t influence me with any power. So I like to remind myself that I can feel without anyone manipulating me.… I know, it’s lame.
Deut. xxxii. 20. "I will hide myself from them in view of their latter sins, for they are a froward generation. They have provoked me to anger by things which are no gods, and I will provoke them to jealousy by a people which is not my people, by an ignorant and foolish nation."
Make it myself? But I'm a physical organic chemist!
Such are my opinions, and each day of my life I bless my Redeemer who has implanted them in me, who has transformed me, a man full of weakness, misery, and lust, of pride and ambition, into a man exempt from all these evils, by the power of his grace, to which all the glory is due; since of myself I have only misery and sin.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Because you are beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence
All this time I've hated myself for it. I thought I'd given it up for nothing. But if I hadn't fallen, I wouldn't have met you.
I love myself when I am laughing. . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.
When Abu-Bekr, "the righteous" (the first Khalif), was praised, he used to say: "O God, Thou knowest me better than I know myself, and I know myself better than they know me. Make me, I pray Thee, better than they suppose; forgive me what they know not, and lay not to my account what they say."
Were I in that state I should be glad if any one would pity my folly, and would have the goodness to deliver me in despite of myself!
I trust no one, not even myself.
Every morning I shall concern myself anew about the boundary Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No And pressing forward honor reality. We cannot avoid Using power, Cannot escape the compulsion To afflict the world, So let us, cautious in diction And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully.
believe this is because understanding is risky. If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. So as I say, it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual,
I am looking for a future for myself. I like to hear about the possibilities of others.
His eyes darken, deaden, all of a sudden. He looks toward the wall. “Don’t do that,” he says. “Don’t ask me questions you already know the answers to. Twice I’ve laid myself bare for you and all it’s gotten me was a bullet wound and a broken heart. Don’t torture me,” he says, meeting my eyes again. “It’s a cruel thing to do, even to someone like me.
_The arrangement._--I should be far more afraid of making a mistake myself, and of finding that the Christian religion was true, than of not deceiving myself in believing it true.
"But go ye to Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people. And now, because ye have done all these works, saith the Lord, I will do unto this house, in which my name is called upon, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to your priests, as I have done to Shiloh." For I have rejected it and made myself a temple elsewhere.
Dear God, My heart is heavy from my past mistakes. There’s been times in my life I’ve caused others pain. I ask that today you set me free, and lift this weight off my heart. I know you forgive me Father, but I need to learn how to forgive myself. Let the burden of my self-doubt and guilt be lifted. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.
I believe that what separates us all from one another is simply society itself, or, if you like, politics. This is what raises barriers between men, this is what creates misunderstanding. If I may be allowed to express myself paradoxically, I should say that the truest society, the authentic human community, is extra-social — a wider, deeper society, that which is revealed by our common anxieties, our desires, our secret nostalgias. The whole history of the world has been governed by nostalgias and anxieties, which political action does no more than reflect and interpret, very imperfectly. No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
How shall I be able to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself?
Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure,-- Sighed to think I read a book, Only read, perhaps, by me.
You make me better. You make me believe in myself, you make me everything I’ve ever wanted to be and to feel.
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.
I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.
Epaminondas, that heathen captain, finding himself lifted up in the day of his public triumph, the next day went drooping and hanging down his head; but being asked what was the reason of his so great dejection, made answer: "Yesterday I felt myself transported with vainglory, therefore I chastise myself for it to-day."--_Plutarch._
I have never gone out to mingle with the world without losing something of myself.--BL. ALBERT THE GREAT.
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth and truth rewarded me.
They all think I’m killing myself at this pace, but what they don’t understand is that I’m living at a peak of clarity and beauty I never knew existed. Every part of me is attuned to the work. I soak it up into my pores during the day, and at night—in the moments before I pass off into sleep—ideas explode into my head like fireworks. There is no greater joy than the burst of solution to a problem.
Exegi monumentum ?re perennius=--I have reared a memorial of myself more durable than brass.
Another great luxury is letting myself cry - I always feel marvellously peaceful after that. But it is difficult to arrange times for it, as my face takes so long to recover; it isn't safe in the mornings if I am to look normal when I meet father at lunch, and the afternoons are no better, as Thomas is home by five. It would be all right in bed at night but such a waste, as that is my happiest time. Days when father goes over to read in the Scoatney library are good crying days.
You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it. — H. L. Mencken
Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.
Part of me wishes I could see him; I want to make sure he's really going to be okay, that he's recovering well and eating enough and getting sleep at night. But another part of me is afraid to see him now. Because seeing Adam means saying good-bye. It means recognizing that I can't be with him anymore and knowing that I have to find a new life for myself. Alone.
The first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good-humour, and the fourth for mine enemies.
When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.
Go away,” I say. He raises his hands in surrender and takes a step back. “This far?” “Farther.” Another step. “Better?” “Yes,” I smart. Silas grins. “I don’t know myself well, but I can tell I have a lot of game.” “Oh, please,” I say. “If you were a game, Silas, you’d be Monopoly. You just go on and on and everyone ends up cheating just to be over with it.” He’s quiet for a minute. I feel bad for saying something so awkward even if it was a joke. “You’re probably right,” he laughs. “That’s why you cheated on me with that asshat, Brian. Lucky for you, I’m not Monopoly Silas anymore. I’m Tetris Silas. All my pieces and parts are going to fit into all of your pieces and parts.
I am an individual \x85 a circle touching and intersecting my neighbours at certain points, but nowhere corresponding, nowhere blending. \x85 But my individuality, however all-sufficient for myself, is an infinitesimal point, an atom subject in all things to the Law of Storms called Life. I feel, I know that Fate is. But I cannot know what is or what is not fated to befall me. Therefore in the pursuit of perfection as an individual lies my highest, and indeed my only duty, the "I" being duly blended with the "We." \x85 I am bound to take careful thought concerning the consequences of every word and deed. When, however, the Future has become the Past, it would be the merest vanity for me to grieve or to repent over that which was decreed by universal Law.
Oh, what a blessed formula for us! This path of mine is dark, mysterious, perplexing; _nevertheless, at Thy word_ I will go forward. This trial of mine is cutting, sore for flesh and blood to bear. It is hard to breathe through a broken heart, Thy will be done. But, _nevertheless, at Thy word_ I will say, Even so, Father! This besetting habit, or infirmity, or sin of mine, is difficult to crucify. It has become part of myself--a second nature; to be severed from it would be like the cutting off of a right hand, or the plucking out of a right eye; _nevertheless, at Thy word_ I will lay aside every weight; this idol I will utterly abolish. This righteousness of mine it is hard to ignore; all these virtues, and amiabilities, and natural graces, it is hard to believe that they dare not in any way be mixed up in the matter of my salvation; and that I am to receive all from first to last as the gift of God, through Jesus Christ my Lord. _Nevertheless, at Thy word_ I will count all but loss for the excellency of His knowledge.--_Macduff._
Mea virtute me involvo=--I wrap myself in my virtue.
That is as well said as if I had said it myself.
And now I’m looking at you,” he said, “and you’re asking me if I still want you, as if I could stop loving you. As if I would want to give up the thing that makes me stronger than anything else ever has. I never dared give much of myself to anyone before – bits of myself to the Lightwoods, to Isabelle and Alec, but it took years to do it – but, Clary, since the first time I saw you, I have belonged to you completely. I still do. If you want me.
Therefore I do not here undertake to prove by natural reasons either the existence of God or the Trinity, or the immortality of the soul, nor anything of that sort, not only because I do not feel myself strong enough to find in nature proofs to convince hardened atheists, but also, because this knowledge without Jesus Christ is useless and barren. Though a man should be persuaded that the proportions of numbers are immaterial truths, eternal, and dependent on a first truth in whom they subsist, and who is called God, I should not consider him far advanced towards his salvation.
And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.
I never whisper'd a private affair / Within the hearing of cat or mouse, / No, not to myself in the closet alone, / But I heard it shouted at once from the top of the house; / Everything came to be known.
I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.
A love thought: I love you so much that I could wish I had been born your brother, or had brought you into the world myself.
Well, honour is the subject of my story. I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but, for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself.
Tui me miseret, mei piget=--I pity you and vex myself.
Not if I know myself at all.
I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest.
Sometimes I wish I could step outside of myself for a while. I want to leave this worn body behind, but my chains are too many, my weights too heavy. This life is all that’s left of me. And I know I won’t be able to meet myself in the mirror for the rest of the day.
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
That is always best which gives me to myself.
In my virtue= (_Tugend
Compare not thyself with others, but with me. If thou findest me not in those with whom thou comparest thyself, thou comparest thyself with him that is abominable. If thou findest me there compare thyself to me. But who is it that thou dost compare? Thyself, or me in thee? If it be thyself it is one that is abominable; if it be me thou comparest me to myself. Now I am God in all.
Mother did not answer. She was still gazing up at the sky. After a while she said, "I made up a sort of saying for myself, Nat. I will lift up my eyes unto the stars. Sometimes, if you look at the stars long enough, it helps. It shrinks your day-by-day troubles down to size." She smiled. 'We'd better go back. Granny and Father will be wondering where we are.
Why did I want to meet a boy and fall in love? Why make the end of my life harder on myself? It was different when it was just words on paper, when I didn't know who he was, when I didn't know how I'd really feel.
Faith I have, in myself, in humanity, in the worthwhileness of the pursuits in entertainment for the masses. But wide awake, not blind faith, moves me. My operations are based on experience, thoughtful observation and warm fellowship with my neighbors at home and around the world.
As long as I am mayor of this city the great industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, 'That man is a Red, that man is a Communist.' You never hear a real American talk like that.
Perfection in anything is unbearably dull. Myself, I prefer a touch of imperfection.
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; / And in the lowest deep a lower deep, / Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide, / To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself.
It is unjust that any should attach themselves to me, even though they do it with pleasure, and voluntarily. I should deceive those in whom I aroused this desire, for I am not the final end of any, nor have I that which can satisfy them. Am I not about to die? And thus the object of their attachment will die. Thus as it would be blameworthy in me to cause a falsehood to be believed, though I should gently insinuate it, though it should be believed with pleasure, and though it should give me pleasure; in like manner it is blameworthy in me if I make myself beloved, and if I draw persons to attach themselves to me. I ought to warn those who are ready to consent to a lie, that they should not believe it, whatever advantage accrues to me from it; and in the same way that they should not attach themselves to me; for they ought to spend their life and their pains in pleasing God, or in seeking him.
I have myself practised the art of sculpture as well as that of painting, and I have practised both arts in the same degree. I think, therefore, that I can give an impartial opinion as to which of the two is the most difficult: the most perfect requires the greater talent, and is to be preferred.
I always channel my emotions into my work. That way, I don't hurt anyone but myself.
Which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep, Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
Multa quidem scripsi; sed qu? vitiosa putavi, / Emendaturis ignibus ipse dedi=--Much have I written; but what I considered faulty I myself committed to the correcting flames.
Ich fuhle Mut, mich in die Welt zu wagen / Der Erde Weh, der Erde Gluck zu tragen=--I feel courage enough to cast myself into the world, to bear earth's woe and weal.
"Tell me how you bear so blandly the assuming ways of wild young people?" Truly they would be unbearable if I had not also been unbearable myself as well.
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
I find out a lot about myself by sleeping. Dreams, they are who I am when I’m too tired to be me.
She tries to take a step down the hall, but I tug on her hand and kiss her again, and this time it's not a peck. I kiss her hard, losing myself in her taste and her heat and every damn thing about her. I never expected her. Sometimes people sneak up on you and suddenly you don't know you ever lived without them.
I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.
By no effort of the understanding, by no stretch of imagination, can I explain to myself how language could have grown out of anything which animals possess, even if we granted them millions of years for that purpose. If anything has a right to the name of specific difference, it is language, as we find it in man, and in man only. Even if we removed the name of specific difference from our philosophic dictionaries, I should still hold that nothing deserves the name of man except what is able to speak.
I awoke one morning and found myself famous.
To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
Nothing can work me damage except myself.
Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.
I saw a rainbow earlier today Lately those rainbows be comin' round like everyday Deep in the struggle I have found the beauty of me God is watchin' and the Devil finally let me be. Here in this moment to myself.
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty… But I am too busy thinking about myself.
"I know not who has sent me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am; I am terribly ignorant of every thing; I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, nor even that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, yet is as ignorant of itself as of all beside. I see those dreadful spaces of the universe which close me in, and I find myself fixed in one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am set in this place rather than elsewhere, nor why this moment of time given me for life is assigned to this point rather than another of the whole Eternity which was before me or which shall be after me. I see nothing but infinities on every side, which close me round as an atom, and as a shadow which endures but for an instant and returns no more. I know only that I must shortly die, but what I know the least is this very death which I cannot avoid.
We cannot know, we cannot name the Divine, nor can we understand its ways as manifested in nature and human life. We ask why there should be suffering and sin, we cannot answer the question. All we can say is, it is willed to be so. Some help our human understanding may find, however, by simply imagining what would have been our life if the power of evil had not been given us. It seems to me that in that case we, human beings as we are, should never have had a conception of what is meant by good: we should have been like the birds in the air, happier, it may be, but better, no. Or if suffering had always been reserved for the bad, we should all have become the most cunning angels. Often when I am met by a difficulty which seems insoluble, I try that experiment, and say, Let us see what would happen if it were otherwise. Still, I confess there is some suffering on earth which goes beyond all understanding, which even the truest Christian love and charity seems unable to remove or mitigate. It can teach us one thing only, that we are blind, and that in the darkness of the night we lose our faith in a Dawn which will drive away darkness, fear, and despair. Much, no doubt, could be done even by what is now called Communism, but what in earlier days was called Christianity. And then one wonders whether the world can ever again become truly Christian. I dare not call myself a Christian. I have hardly met the men in all my life who deserved that name. Again, I say, let us do our best, knowing all the time that our best is a mere nothing.