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People grind
and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out
but what was put in. But the moment they desert the
tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit,
hope,
virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid.
-
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Remember
always that you have not only
the right
to be an
individual;
you have an obligation to be one.
You
cannot make any useful contribution in life
unless you do
this. -Eleanor
Roosevelt
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| Resolve
to be thyself; and know that those
Who find themselves, lose their misery. -
Matthew Arnold |
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When you
can, always advise people to do what you see they really
want to do,
so long as what they want to do isn't
dangerously unlawful, stupidly unsocial,
or obviously
impossible. Doing what they want to do, they may
succeed;
doing what they don't want to do, they won't.
-James Gould Cozzens
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| You and I can profit by
asking ourselves: What do I see when I look through
the lens of
my attitude toward myself? Am I more a critic than a
friend?
Do I look beyond the surface blemishes to find the truly
beautiful
and unique person that I am? Or do I play the
destructive "comparison game"?
What verdict does the
juror of my mind pass on me:
"good at heart" or
"guilty on all counts"?
-John Powell, S.J. |
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| Endeavor
to be patient in bearing the defects and infirmities
of
others, of what sort soever they be; for thou thyself
also
hast many failings which must be borne with by
others. -Thomas
a Kempis |
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| What
another would have done as well as you, do not do it.
What another would have said as well as you, do not
say it;
written as well, do not write it. Be
faithful to that
which exists nowhere but in yourself--and
there make yourself indispensable.
-Andre
Gide |
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| All of us have to seek in our own way to make
our own selves
more noble and to realize our own true worth.
-
Albert Schweitzer |
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| It is healthy to
accept myself as I am, to like myself, and to love myself. It is okay for me to accept a compliment or praise.
Because I am just as deserving
and worthy as anyone
else, I may treat myself as well as I treat others,
live
my own life, and enjoy my life. There is a
difference between being unselfish
and being a martyr or
a victim. There is a time for putting myself first
so that I may take care of myself and my needs.
-Jill Wolf |
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| Happiness
belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves.
For
all external sources of happiness and pleasure are,
by
their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious,
ephemeral, and subject to chance.
-
Arthur Schopenhauer |
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| Being bored is an insult to
oneself. -
Jules Renard |
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| Be yourself and think for yourself;
and while your conclusions may not be infallible,
they
will be nearer right than the conclusions forced upon you.
-
Elbert Hubbard |
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| The
person who makes everything that leads to
happiness
depend upon him or herself,
and not upon other people,
has
adopted the very best plan for living
happily. -Plato |
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| The
older I get, the more I realize the importance of
exercising
the various dimensions of my body, soul, mind,
and heart. Taken together,
these aspects give me a
sense of wholeness. I want to be a whole human
being
rather than one who limps on one leg because I don't
know how to use
all of my parts. Intellectual,
emotional, and physical activity are not
separate
entities. Rather, they are dimensions of the same
human being. -Robert
Fulghum |
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| You have
to be true to yourself,
but you have to be true to your best self,
not
to the self that secretly thinks
you are better than other people. -Stephen
Gaskin |
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| You've got to believe
deep inside yourself that you're destined
to do great things. -Joe Paterno |
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| There's only one corner of the
universe
you can be certain of improving,
and that's your
own self. -
Aldous Huxley |
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| Compassion for others begins
with kindness to ourselves. -Pema Chödrön |
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The
Hasidic rabbi, Zuscha, was asked on his deathbed what he thought
the kingdom of God would be like. He replied, "I don't know.
But one thing I do know. When I get there I am not going
to be asked, 'Why weren't you Moses? Why weren't you
David?' I am only going to be asked, 'Why weren't
you Zuscha? Why weren't you fully you?'"
-Alan
Loy McGinnis
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Each heart is a
world.--
You find all
within yourself that you find without.--
To know yourself
you have only to set down a true statement
of these that
ever loved or hated you. -
Johann Kasper Lavater |
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What
I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people
think.
This rule, equally arduous in actual and
intellectual life, may serve
for the whole distinction
between greatness and meanness. It is the harder,
because you will always find those who think they know
what is your duty
better than you know it. It is
easy in the world to live after the world's opinion;
it
is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who
in the midst of the crowd keeps with
perfect sweetness
the independence of solitude. -Ralph
Waldo Emerson |
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When
you reread a classic you do
not see more in the book than
you
did before;
you see more in you
than there was before.
-Clifton Fadiman |
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I
was always looking outside
myself for strength and
confidence,
but it comes from
within. It is there all the time.
-Anna
Freud |
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We
all have choices to make about the quality of our presence and
how we will affect those around us.
The quality of our presence is
dependent not on what we can or cannot “do” but on the essence
of who we are and how we relate to others.
Becoming the presence
we would like to be is an intentional work.
It grows while
we make peace with ourselves and with life.
-
Sallirae Henderson |
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The holiest of holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
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Don't
compromise yourself. You are all you've got.
-Janis
Joplin |
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In solitude all great things
are born. -Moses Harvey |
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The
path of awakening is not about becoming
who you are. Rather it is about
unbecoming who you are not.
-Leonard
Jacobson |
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You
are a child of the universe, “fearfully and wonderfully made.” In
the history
of creation, there has never been anyone like you. Accept this reality
about yourself—
that you are a special, unique human being who has a place on this
earth
that no one else can fill. Acknowledge yourself as a glorious
expression
of your loving Creator. This healthy self-love will form the
foundation
of a joyful and satisfying life. Then, as you love and accept
yourself,
your inner light will shine outward to bless and heal your fellow
human beings. -
Douglas Bloch |
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I shall try to remember all this day that I am a
divine creation with infinite possibilities.
-
Benjamin Eitelgeorge |
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To set us on a clear path, it
is important to communicate well, at least with ourselves.
To know what we want, to know what we mean, and to learn to
express ourselves clearly,
with as little confusion as possible.
If you are confused about yourself, you can expect
to be misunderstood by those around you.
You have to set your mind straight,
and that is a task that no one else can undertake for you.
-Rosemary Altea |
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Coming
to appreciate your worth can, in some cases, dramatically improve
your circumstances by changing the choices you make and the
actions
you take. And as you
begin to treat yourself with more respect,
other people begin to do the same, since we subconsciously
"train"
others how to treat us through messages we send through body
language,
tone of voice, and other subtle cues and behaviors.
Discovering your innate
worth and living from that place allows you to make more
constructive choices--to choose the higher roads of life.
-Dan
Millman |
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Treating
ourselves as a best friend is an important factor in the quality
of our current living and will be crucial in our last years.
It’s the only way
we can gain an intimate knowledge of who we are and what we need.
Being familiar with – and able to articulate – our wants and
needs gives us
some control of our lives, and is absolutely essential when we are
old
and may have to rely on others to do what we can no longer do for
ourselves. -Sallirae
Henderson |
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You
cannot fail at
being
yourself. A cat
doesn't try
to be a
tiger, and you shouldn't
try to be something
you aren't.
You are
a
process, not a
product.
Your
job
is to
discover
what you are and to
create that creature.
You
still won't be
perfect, but
success
isn't about
perfection--
it is about
authenticity.
You are a
success
if you
are being
your real,
authentic self. - Bernie
Siegel |
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Contentment.
. . comes as the infallible result of great acceptances,
great humilities—of not trying to make ourselves this or that
(to conform to some dramatized version of ourselves), but of
surrendering ourselves to the fullness of life—of letting life
flow through us. -David
Grayson |
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If
I can think of myself as loved, I can love and accept others.
If I see myself as forgiven, I can be gracious toward others.
If I see myself as powerful, I can do what I know is right.
If I see myself as full, I can give myself freely to others.
-Kathy
Peel |
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We
all want recognition for our “specialness.”
But we should never take
our self-worth from our society, feedback from others, or our own
comparisons
to others. Our
self-esteem should be based in the fact that God created us
with the utmost care and has called His creation good.
In His foresight
we are all made of “the right stuff.”
Our self-worth then comes from
how we use it, in service to our families and communities,
exercising our creative gifts, and becoming one with God.
-unattributed |
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You
may study with the highest teachers, but you will find no one but
yourself
teaching you.
You may travel the world over, yet find nothing but
yourself,
reflected the world over.
So if you now find yourself in a cell, take heart
that of all the teachers in the world, out of all the places in
the world,
you still have with you the only ultimate ingredient of your
journey:
yourself. -
Bo Lozoff |
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Thinking
like a winner means not always having to defeat someone
else.
It means being able to grow from a situation in which you
fail to reach
your goal.
It involves not demanding perfection from yourself
in every
single thing you do, but, instead, thinking of yourself as
perfect and thus capable of growing.
It means reminding yourself that perfection
doesn’t
mean staying the same; it means being able to allow
yourself to grow.
Thinking as a winner means not coming down on yourself; it
means refusing
to allow self-repudiating thoughts into your head.
It involves pushing out
the inclination to evaluate yourself in comparison with
others, and giving yourself permission to be the unique
person you are. -
Wayne Dyer |
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In a world in which we are exposed to more
information, more options,
more philosophies, more perspectives than ever before, in which we
must
choose the values by which we will live (rather than
unquestioningly follow
some tradition for no better reason than that our own parents
did), we need
to be willing to stand on our own judgment and trust our own
intelligence—to
look at the world through our own eyes—to chart our course and
think through
how to achieve the future we want, to commit ourselves to
continuous
questioning and learning—to be, in a word, self-responsible.
-
Nathaniel Branden |
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“The
things we see,” Pistorius said softly, “are the same things
that
are within us.
That is why so many people live such unreal lives.
They take the images outside them for reality and never allow
the world within to assert itself.”
-Herman Hesse (in Demian) |
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This
morning take a few minutes to reflect on how
you give of yourself to the world.
Often we get
caught up in the frenzy of buying and giving things. Look at the ways you give appreciation, friendship,
energy, time, love, and affection, and give of your
own special talents and abilities throughout the year.
Acknowledge yourself for having enriched the lives
of others.
Spend some time loving yourself
for the giving light that you are.
-
Shakti Gawain |
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There
is no such thing as can’t, only won’t.
If you’re qualified, all it takes
is a burning desire to accomplish, to make
a change.
Go forward, go backward.
Whatever it takes!
But you can’t blame
other people or society in general.
It all comes from your mind.
When we do the impossible we
realize that we are special people.
-
Jan Ashford |
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It is never too late to be what
you might have
been. -
George Eliot |
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Try not to become a person of success but rather
try to become a person of value.
-
Albert Einstein |
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I
do not know when I have had happier times in my soul, than when I
have been
sitting at work, with nothing before me but a candle and a white
cloth, and hearing
no sound but that of my own breath, with God in my soul and heaven
in my eye . . . .
I rejoice in being exactly what I am,--a creature capable of
loving God, and who,
as long as God lives, must be happy.
I get up and look for a while out the window,
and gaze at the moon and stars, the work of an Almighty hand.
I think of the grandeur
of the universe, and then sit down, and think myself one of the
happiest beings in it.
-attributed to a poor 18th-century Methodist woman |
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Up
to a point people’s lives are shaped by environment, heredity,
and movements and changes in the world about them; then there
comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of
their
lives into the sort of thing they wish to be. . . . Everyone has
it within
their power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow.
-
Louis L’Amour |
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As children of the Most High God we are to accept
ourselves as
the natural creation does—which simply is in great beauty,
without
self-condemnation. Yet
those people who truly love and accept
themselves are rare. Why do we seek self-worth through social
recognition and acquisition, as though those were needed?
We are
special children of God, the Creator of worlds without measure.
As such each one of us is intrinsically very, very worthy.
-
Bruce Gilbert |
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The
more you surrender to the fear of someone’s disapproval, the
more you lose face
in your own eyes, and the more desperate you become for
someone’s approval.
Within you is a void that should have been filled by self-esteem. When you
attempt to fill it with the approval of others instead, the void
grows deeper and
the hunger for acceptance and approval grows stronger.
The only solution is
to summon the courage to honor your own judgment,
frightening though that may be in the beginning.
-Nathaniel
Branden |
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To
the extent that we honor all aspects of ourselves, we remove
revulsion,
self-hate, horror, and terror from our lives.
As whole human beings we are
the creatures of the greatest complexity on this planet.
Respect for this
complexity includes our insisting on acceptance of the
inconsistent and incongruous.
-
Theodore Rubin |
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Just trust yourself, then you will know how to
live. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
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A
spiritual kingdom lies all about us, enclosing us,
embracing us, altogether within reach of our inner selves,
waiting for us to recognize it.
God Himself is here awaiting
our response to His presence.
This eternal world will come
alive to us the moment we begin to reckon upon its reality.
-A.W. Tozer |
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How I feel about and behave toward myself is the
basic determinant of most of my behavior.
If I improve my self-regard, I will find that dozens of
behaviors change automatically.
If, for example, I increase my feelings of self-competence,
I will probably be less defensive, less angered by criticism, less
devastated if I do not get a raise, less anxious when I come to
work, better able to make decisions, and more able to appreciate
and praise other people. -
Will Schultz |
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There
is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house
with four rooms--a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a
spiritual.
Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time, but unless
we go into every room every day, even if only to keep
it aired, we are not a complete person.
-Rumer
Godden |
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We
must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us.
-
Virginia Satir |
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Something
we were withholding made us weak
Until we found it was ourselves.
-
Robert Frost |
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A
little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me
depressed.
A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites
me. It takes
very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am
like a small boat
on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves. All the
time and energy
I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from
being
tipped over and drowning shows my life is mostly a struggle for
survival:
not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from
the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me.
-Henri J.M. Nouwen |
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Accepting
the labels other people try to tag us with is one of the most
destructive things we can do to ourselves. Because once we
accept
those labels, we allow them to define us--what we can do, what
we should want, what we can and can't have. We start
considering
what others think is right for us instead of using our own
instincts
and self-knowledge to make our own best choices.
Over the years I have learned that we can't live genuinely until
we learn to disregard the labels and judgments of others. As
some
wise person once said, "You aren't what people call you, you
are what
you answer to." The better we become at ignoring
whatever people
call us, the closer we get to fulfilling our dreams, the easier it
becomes to create the life we really want,
not the life someone else thinks we should have.
-Patti
LaBelle |
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