The Self Quotes

No self-effort in the direction of enlightenment is ever wasted. Even if you don't become fully enlightened in a given lifetime, you will be much happier and more aware.

Enlightenment simply means that you've gotten above the body-mind complex. You've refined the self, dissolved it in the white light of eternity and gone through all the gradient shifts.

Enlightenment is the culmination of self-knowledge, pure unadulterated knowledge. Not knowledge you can get from reading a book, it comes from perfecting your awareness, your mind.

Nirvana is a step beyond. You dissolve into the universe. The universe dissolves into you until there is no longer a difference. There is no sense of individual self as perceiver.

Enlightenment is the ability to freely transact within the ten thousand states of mind without a continuous self or awareness

Enlightenment just means that you don't have a structural self. It means you've flipped through the gradated realities. Nothing binds, nothing clings to you. You're unaffected by everything.

The effort to lift one's self into perfect enlightenment is a profound thing. It has nothing to do with individual will. It's a refraction of the cosmos. The cosmos delights in itself.

Yes I say that I am enlightened. What does that mean? It means I live in a condition of light...There really is no primary self anymore.

If you ever want to study acting you should be around an enlightened person for a while, because all they do is play roles, since they no longer have a self.

It is equally easy, initially, for either a man or a woman to attain enlightenment, what we would call liberation or self-realization.

The few women who have been admitted to the study are usually given a second-class status in which they are taught only the basics of self-discovery.

They are denied access to the more advanced techniques of releasing the kundalini energy, which bring about quantum leaps in self-awareness.

You find yourself in this world, you find yourself out of this world and there's no one to find the Self. There's no Self to find.

The yoga of love is the yoga of acceptance. Love teaches us that which is most important is self-acceptance.

The ego is a false perception of self. It's an idea, a transitory identity that we've picked up.

The path of love has many opponents - fear, self-pity, anxiety, hate, lust, greed, avarice - all the usual freinds.

There is a great deal of self-will in the world, but very little genuine independence of character.

The mistake we make is to look for a source of comfort in ourselves: self-contemplation, instead of gazing upon God. In other words, we look for comfort precisely where comfort never can be.

I suspect anyone self-satisfied enough to refuse lawful pleasures: we are not sufficiently rich in our separate resources to reject the graces of the universe when offered.

You never exist quite so much as when you are not thinking

Heroism--that is the disposition of a man who aspires to a goal compared to which he himself is wholly insignificant. Heroism is the good will to self-destruction.

There is a universal need to exercise some kind of power, or to create for one's self the appearance of some power, if only temporarily, in the form of intoxication.

My humanity is a constant self-overcoming.

How much rationality and higher protection there is in such self-deception, and how much falseness I still require in order to allow myself again and again the luxury of my sincerity.

Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his friend's emancipator.

Yet where is your inner value when you no longer know what it is to breathe freely; when you no longer have freedom over your own selves

A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love, betrays its sediment: its dregs come up.

Robinson had a servant even better than Friday: His name was Crusoe.

Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind them there is still the Self. The Self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit.

When there is a choice about it, a great sacrifice is preferable to a small sacrifice, because we compensate ourselves for a greatone with self-admiration, which is not possible with a small one.

The value of a man can only be measured with regard to other men.

Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, "know thyself," but as if prompted by the commandment: will a self, and so become a self.

To know thyself--in others self-concern; Would'st thou know others? read thyself--and learn!

Individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong.

For the world is only governed by self-interest.

I let myself feel good and sorry for myself, but only for a second. Daddy always said that the most useless of all human emotions was self-pity.

But somehow in identifying myself as the healer, there was still a seed of both self-righteousness and defense from a kind of emptiness.

Values-oriented foreign policy of the free world would be much better, supported by the self-awareness of being on the right side of history.

Moscow is simply unwilling to recognize the right of self-determination of nations.

I think my younger self would be more amazed to know I was doing an interview for 'The Spectator.

The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void.

I am aware of the talent I was gifted and had to execute against it. It is just being very self aware and betting on your best strength.

As I am, so are others as others are, so am I. Having thus identified self and others, harm no one nor have them harmed.

This is myself, baby. All of my selves. I own each and every one of them. I know who I'm pretending to be and who I am." The look he gives me is withering. "Do you?

I used to be very unathletic. I was always so gangly and self-conscious about my height. I had convinced myself I was uncoordinated. And as a result, I didn't want to try stuff.

I'll smoke anything. I won't spend a lot of money on cigars, because I consider that too self indulgent. $3, max, except for special occasions. And yes, I do know the difference.

A modest dose of self-love is entirely healthy - who would want to live in a world where everyone hated themselves? But taken too far it soon becomes poisonous.

I am grateful that I am not as judgmental as all those censorious, self-righteous people around me. In each of us there is a little of all of us.

First really like is just a little bit foolishness as well as a lot of curiosity. No actually self-respecting girl would reap the benefits of it.

A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to cheat than the rest of the world.