All Quotes By Tag: Self

“[Martin] Luther, we grant, overcame bondage out of devotion by replacing it by bondage out of conviction. He shattered faith in authority because he restored the authority of faith. He turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.”

“The same virtues, in the end, the same virtue (love), are required throughout, and fantasy (self) can prevent us from seeing a blade of grass just as it can prevent us from seeing another person. An increasing awareness of ‘goods’ and the attempt (usually only partially successful) to attend to them purely, without self, brings with it an increasing awareness of the unity and interdependence of the moral world. One-seeking intelligence is the image of faith.”

“Maybe I am villain in your story, but I am hero in mine.”

“I paid, got up, walkedto the door, openedit.I heard the mansay, “that guy’snuts.”out on the street Iwalked northfeelingcuriouslyhonored.”

“There is something more dangerous than the death of one’s body. It is “the undiscovered self”; being alive without knowing why.”

“I want to unfold.I don’t want to be folded anywhere,because where I am folded,there I am a lie.”

“And yet this self, containsTides, continents and stars―a myriad selves,Is small and solitary as one grass-bladePassed over by the windAmongst a myriad grasses on the prairie.”

“Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?”

“Then you are a poet?’ she asked, fingering the flyer in her pocket.’No not at all,’ he waved his hand. ‘I am merely a character in a poem.”

“You had once asked me if I was afraid of death. I said I was afraid of not living. I don’t want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalues what the self is.”

“My NameOnce when the lawn was a golden green and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass, feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered what I would become and where I would find myself, and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard my name as if for the first time, heard it the way one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off as though it belonged not to me but to the silence from which it had come and to which it would go.”

“If you’re anything like me,You bite your nails,And laugh when you’re nervous.You promise people the world,because that’s what they want from you.You like giving them what they want…But darling, you need to stop,If you’re anything like me,You knock on wood every time you make plans.You cross your fingers, hold your breath,Wish on lucky numbers and eyelashesYour superstitions were the lone survivors of the shipwreck.Rest In Peace, to your naive bravado…If life gets too good now,Darling, it scares you.If you’re anything like me,You never wanted to lock your door,Your secret garden gate or your diary drawerDidn’t want to face the you you don’t know anymoreFor fear she was much better before…But Darling, now you have to.If you’re anything like me,There’s a justice system in your headFor names you’ll never speak again,And you make your ruthless rulings.Each new enemy turns to steelThey become the bars that confine you,In your own little golden prison cell…But Darling, there is where you meet yourself.If you’re anything like meYou’ve grown to hate your prideTo love your thighsAnd no amount of friends at 25Will fill the empty seatsAt the lunch tables of your pastThe teams that picked you last…But Darling, you keep trying.If you’re anything like me,You couldn’t recognize the face of your loveUntil they stripped you of your shiny paintThrew your victory flag awayAnd you saw the ones who wanted you anyway…Darling, later on you will thank your starsfor that frightful day.If you’re anything like me,I’m sorry.But Darling, it’s going to be okay.”

“Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessel’s prow I stand, which bears me Forwards, forwards, o’er the starlit sea.”

“Not in the clamor of the crowded street,Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.”

“I became convinced that I was being watched.Because self was still leaking everywhere, a part of me began to think it was Mizuko rather than a stranger. I hoped that there might still be a reunion. I hoped it in the shy, sly way hope comes out of the jar, the mistranslated box, last—after everything and everyone else has escaped.”