Oneself Quotes

You must not expect anything from others. It's you, of yourself, of whom you must ask a lot. Only from oneself has one the right to ask everything and anything. This way it's up to you...your own choices...what you get from others remains a present, a gift. - Albert Schweitzer

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck. - Iris Murdoch

Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary. - F. Sagan

Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradles. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. - Virginia Woolf

Wit is a treacherous dart. It is perhaps the only weapon with which it is possible to stab oneself in one's own back. - Geoffrey Bocca

Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, and in lending oneself to the universal delusion without becoming its dupe. - Henri Frederic Amiel

Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese? - Dame Edith Sitwell

Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshiping oneself is best. - C.S. Lewis

Whether one calls oneself conservative or revolutionary, whether one composers in a conventional or progressive manner, whether one tries to imitate old styles or is destined to express new ideas - one must be convinced of the infallibility of one's own fantasy and one must believe in one's own inspiration. - Arnold Schoenberg

Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood. - Lionel Trilling