To be one's own master is to be the slave of self.

Fatalism is the lazy man's way of accepting the inevitable.

Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual.

Novels are longer than life.

Would that well-thinking people should be replaced by thinking ones.

Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?

Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth.

With renunciation life begins.

When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks.

There are intangible realities which float near us, formless and without words; realities which no one has thought out, and which are excluded for lack of interpreters.

The advantage of love at first sight is that it delays a second sight.

It is time for dead languages to be quiet.

Lovers should also have their days off.

Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.

Renouncement: the heroism of mediocrity.

If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

How many inner resources one needs to tolerate a life of leisure without fatigue.

To be one's own master is to be the slave of self.

Paris has always seemed ... the only city where you can live and express yourself as you please.

Paris has always seemed to me to be the only city in which one can live as one sees fit.

Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists, when you can ignore them like wise men?

A scholar's heart is a dark well in which are buried many aborted feelings that rise to the surface as arguments.

The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.

Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.

I would rather take the role and work and make my own money and self respect than to have sex with someone who has a lot of money.

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence.

Sexual self-restraint is only a preliminary stage in the ego's evolution.

The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.

If you improve a teacher's self-esteem, confidence, communication skills or stress levels, you improve that teacher's overall effectiveness across the curriculum.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

I think we all have blocks between us and the best version of ourselves, whether it's shyness, insecurity, anxiety, whether it's a physical block, and the story of a person overcoming that block to their best self. It's truly inspiring because I think all of us are engaged in that every day.

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

Self-justification is a treacherous servant.

To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness.

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it's unbelievable!

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization.

Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.

But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving.

And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.

I think it is important to maintain a sense of self and confidence, not letting either falter for the sake of a particular part or project, no matter how great it might be.

The mind's first step to self-awareness must be through the body.

Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.

But, sir, they have written me down upon the history of the country as worthy of expulsion, and in no unkindness I must tell them that for all future time my self-respect requires that I shall pass them as strangers.

If we can but tear the blindfold of self-deception from our eyes and loosen the gag of self-denial from our voices, we can restore our country to greatness.