self-reflection quotes

I have never given adoration to any body except myself.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

I’m super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I’m critical of other people, too – I try not to be, though.

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

I was sure I’d set the world on fire, and it was hard for a young feller like me to realize the truth – that I hadn’t set the world on fire, and I was totally unprepared to handle the consequences if ‚The Big Trail‘ had been a success and launched me as a star.

What I have in common with the character in ‚Truman‘ is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

I saw a picture of myself when I came out of the hospital. I didn’t recognize myself.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

I would like to be remembered as someone who did the best she could with the talent she had.

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

I sometimes have a tendency to walk on the dark side.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

I’m inconsistent, even to myself.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

Nothing can be by itself alone, no one can be by himself or herself alone, everyone has to inter-be with every one else. That is why, when you look outside, around you, you can see yourself.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

What good is it being Marilyn Monroe? Why can’t I just be an ordinary woman?

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‚If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?‘ And whenever the answer has been ‚No‘ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

It’s not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do – everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.

It is important to remember yourself.

From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask?

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else’s ideas about you, but what’s important is how you feel about yourself – for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

I deeply regret any harm, or any perceived harm, that I may have done to anyone by any behaviour of mine.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

Don’t throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‚try to be a little kinder.‘

I like actors very much, but to marry one would be like marrying your brother. You look too much alike in the mirror.

When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

I’ve always believed in God. I also think that’s the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you’re in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.