The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.
Seamus Heaney

The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.
John Dewey

Everyone must correct his own self; this is something more difficult to cope with, but it is not impossible.
Bhumibol Adulyadej

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.
Joseph Addison

It wasn't until we got over the self pity that we were able to accept suffering as apart of our life with Christ. A man or woman reaches this plane only when he or she ceases to be the hero.
Corazon Aquino

Desire then is the invasion of the whole self by the wish, which, as it invades, sets going more and more of the psychical processes; but at the same time, so long as it remains desire, does not succeed in getting possession of the self.
Samuel Alexander

You can mark in desire the rising of the tide, as the appetite more and more invades the personality, appealing, as it does, not merely to the sensory side of the self, but to its ideal components as well.
Samuel Alexander

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
Cyril Connolly

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

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.
Toni Morrison

One of my problems is to find the self.
Max Beckmann

Love is when each person is more concerned for the other than for one's self.
David Frost

My real self is probably more creative and more frightening than any sort of drink or drug-induced state.
Ron Wood

The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors.
William Hazlitt

The right of self defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals, and whether the attack be made by Spain herself or by those who abuse her power, its obligation is not the less strong.
James Monroe

Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.
A. C. Benson

Personally, I don't choose any particular religion or symbol or group of words or teachings to define me. That's between me and the most high. You know, my higher self. The Creator.
Erykah Badu

Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.
B. R. Ambedkar

Join me in my quest for a greater understanding of our existence. Join me in my desire for a greater self. Join me as I seek the humility to love and understand my fellow man.
Bryant H. McGill

We can only take it so far, because man can only take it so far, lower self can only take it so far, and you have to realize that the public is only at a certain place.
Alice Cooper