Famous Quotes & Sayings

A. R. Ammons

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.

A. S. Byatt

I'm not very interested in myself. I do have a deep moral belief that you should always look out at other things and not be self-centred.

A. S. Byatt

I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self, the more you do.

Abbas Kiarostami

I would be too selfish if I said everyone should see my movies more than once. To say that would mean I'm just marketing my work!

A. E. van Vogt

I don't recall having any self-awareness about the intricacy of my stories.

Adrienne Rich

Writers matter in a society to the extent that we can help that society hear its unvoiced longing, encounter its erased and disregarded selves, break with complacency, numbness, despair.

Agatha Christie

You know, Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them - and, that way she missed love.

Agatha Christie

You agree - I'm sure you agree that beauty is the only thing worth living for.

Agatha Christie

One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave - our own self. Get on good terms with that companion - learn to live with yourself.

One who contemplates his own self is truly wise.

Jane Austen

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

Jane Austen

From the very beginning— from the first moment, I may almost say— of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.

Jane Austen

He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed....

Jane Austen

What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!

James Wolk

No one ever judges their own self.

Jason Biggs

Getting married has shifted my focus, in such a profound way. You just realize, "Oh, I can't be so selfish anymore. There's someone else."

Jason Alexander

Acting is not terribly important work, and I have always felt a bit of guilt about pursuing something that is so selfish. I love doing it, but it is never something that feels like it's going to change or save the world.

Janos Kadar

I address myself to the Communists, to those Communists who were prompted to join the Party by the progressive ideas of mankind and socialism, and not by selfish personal interests - let us represent our pure and just ideas by pure and just means.

Janos Kadar

Those who joined us for selfish personal reasons, for a career or other motives will be the ones to leave.

Janis Ian

Some people would rather stay ignorant and self-satisfied.

Janis Joplin

Don't compromise your self, you're all you got.

Jared Diamond

Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases.

Janet Jackson

The greatest achievement to any human being is to love God, yourself, and others.

Jane Welsh Carlyle

In spite of the honestest efforts to annihilate my I-ity, or merge it in what the world doubtless considers my better half, I still find myself a self-subsisting and alas! self-seeking me.

Jane Smiley

In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion.

Gary L. Francione

We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence.

Miley Cyrus

I think it's selfish to go out partying all the time, especially if you have little ones in your family.

Miley Cyrus

It is important to ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing and what purpose it serves in the big picture.

Fred Funk

For selfish reasons, I really wish we were having a weak field, so I would have a better chance.

Ben Folds

In many ways, I've chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don't like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible.

Carl von Clausewitz

Self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.

Carl von Clausewitz

With uncertainty in one scale, courage and self-confidence should be thrown into the other to correct the balance. The greater they are, the greater the margin that can be left for accidents.

Carl Sandburg

Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?