|
f5b385d
|
"Not everything is about you," Clary said furiously. "Possibly," Jace said, "but you do have to admit that the majority of things are."
|
|
jace-wayland
ego
|
Cassandra Clare |
|
ae73a16
|
"One of the Silent Brothers is here to see you. Hodge sent me to wake you up. Actually he offered to wake you himself, but since it's 5 a.m., I figured you'd be less cranky if you had something nice to look at." "Meaning you?" "What else?"
|
|
jace-wayland
ego
|
Cassandra Clare |
|
e19ec87
|
Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge... is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.
|
|
empathy
inspirational
accountability
opinion
ego
knowledge
|
Bill Bullard |
|
69b8246
|
And I realized that I'd tolerated him this long because of self-doubt.
|
|
ego
|
Anne Rice |
|
de88a61
|
"Do you ever lose the ego?" Westford asks me. "Yeah." When his daughter kisses me, my ego flies out the window."
|
|
westford
conversation
ego
|
Simone Elkeles |
|
d241f1b
|
I don't want to see you. I don't like you. I don't like your face. You look like an insufferable egotist. You're impertinent. You're too sure of yourself. Twenty years ago I would have punched your face with the greatest of pleasure.
|
|
punch
old-man
ego
insulting
|
Ayn Rand |
|
4b9f87e
|
sometimes when everything seems at its worst when all conspires and gnaws and the hours, days, weeks years seem wasted - stretched there upon my bed in the dark looking upward at the ceiling i get what many will consider an obnoxious thought: it's still nice to be Bukowski.
|
|
irony
poem
poetry
funny
obnoxious
ego
ironic
|
Charles Bukowski |
|
433c898
|
"You're like a god from a Greek myth, Saiman. You have no empathy. You have no concept of the world beyond your ego. Wanting something gives you an automatic right to obtain it by whatever means necessary with no regard to the damage it may do. I would be careful if I were you. Friends and objects of deities' desires dropped like flies. In the end the gods always ended up miserable and alone." -- Kate Daniels"
|
|
empathy
morality
friendship
greek-mythology
ego
gods
|
Ilona Andrews |
|
12d1771
|
Thinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought.
|
|
ego
helplessness
perception
thinking
thought
|
H. Rider Haggard |
|
1e2dff7
|
"Huxley: "Tell me something Bryce, do you know the difference between a Jersey, a Guernsey, a Holstein, and an Ayershire?" Bryce: "No." Huxley: "Seabags Brown does." Bryce: "I don't see what that has to do..." Huxley: "What do you know about Gaelic history?" Bryce: "Not much." Huxley: "Then why don't you sit down one day with Gunner McQuade. He is an expert. Speaks the language, too." Bryce: "I don't..." Huxley: " What do you know about astronomy?" Bryce: "A little." Huxley: "Discuss it with Wellman, he held a fellowship." Bryce: "This is most puzzling." Huxley: "What about Homer, ever read Homer?" Bryce: "Of course I've read Homer." Huxley: "In the original Greek?" Bryce: "No" Huxley: "Then chat with Pfc. Hodgkiss. Loves to read the ancient Greek." Bryce: "Would you kindly get to the point?" Huxley: "The point is this, Bryce. What makes you think you are so goddam superior? Who gave you the bright idea that you had a corner on the world's knowledge? There are privates in this battalion who can piss more brains down a slit trench then you'll ever have. You're the most pretentious, egotistical individual I've ever encountered. Your superiority complex reeks. I've seen the way you treat men, like a big strutting peacock. Why, you've had them do everything but wipe your ass."
|
|
humor
marine-corps
superior
ego
|
Leon Uris |
|
9e72622
|
"So whenever that brittle voice of dissatisfaction emerges within me, I can say "Ah, my ego! There you are, old friend!" It's the same thing when I'm being criticized and I notice myself reaching with outrage, heartache, or defensiveness. It's just my ego, flaring up and testing its power. In such circumstances, I have learned to watch my heated emotions carefully, but I try not to take them too seriously, because I know that it's merely my ego that has been wounded--never my soul It is merely my ego that wants revenge, or to win the biggest prize. It is merely my ego that wants to start a Twitter war against a hater, or to sulk at an insult or to quit in righteous indignation because I didn't get the outcome I wanted. "At such times, I can always steady my life one more by returning to my soul. I ask it, "And what is it that you want, dear one?" "The answer is always the same: "More wonder, please." "As long as I'm still moving in that direction---toward wonder--then I know I will always be fine in my soul, which is where it counts. And since creativity is still the most effective way for me to access wonder, I choose it." --
|
|
wonder
defensiveness
ego
soul
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
6541052
|
I want to make sure Kiara's got a boyfriend who has more to offer than a hot bod and a face that could make angels weep.
|
|
ego
|
Simone Elkeles |
|
f0cb4b4
|
I am smiling a big adopted-orphan smile as I write this ... I still love scribbling the word - WRITER - any time on a form, questionnaire, document asks for my occupation. Fine, I write personality quizzes, I don't write about the Great Issues of the Day, but I think it's fair to say I am a writer ... ('Adopted-orphan smile', I mean, that's not bad, come on.)
|
|
lies
writer
writing
reality
fantasy
compulsive-lying
crazy-bitch
out-of-touch-with-reality
wannabewriter
superiority-complex
self-righteous
egotistical
vainity
vain
pretending
wannabe
ego
smile
smiling
liar
lie
|
Gillian Flynn |
|
0d85844
|
The poor girl ws keeping that student's letter as a precious treasure, and had run to fetch it, her only treasure, because she did not want me to go away without knowing that she, too, was honestly and genuinely loved; that she, too, was addressed respectfully. No doubt that letter was destined to lie in her box and lead to nothing. But none the less, I am certain that she would keep it all her life as a precious treasure, as her pride and justification, and now at such a minute she had thought of that letter and brought it with naive pride to raise herself in my eyes that I might see, that I, too, might think well of her.
|
|
belittle
notes-from-underground
fyodor-dostoyevsky
ego
judgemental
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
|
06207a9
|
It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years. Wasn't it, after all, a kind of life? And there were houses, he knew it, that breathed. They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly, very nearly, human.
|
|
human
spirit
life
old-houses
houses
years
ego
|
Nora Roberts |
|
b841d30
|
To be read. To be heard. To be seen. I want to be read, I want to be heard. I don't need to be seen. To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones. Words have a weight to them. How you choose to present them and to whom is a matter of style and choice.
|
|
words
writer
writing
curiousity
disvoery
style
ego
|
Terry Tempest Williams |
|
9089908
|
How odd that we spend so much time treating the darkness, and so little time seeking the light. The ego loves to glorify itself by self-analysis, yet we do not get rid of darkness by hitting it with a baseball bat. We only get rid of darkness by turning on the light.
|
|
enlightenment
suffering
light
depression
self-awareness
psychoanalysis
darkness-and-light
darkness-within
light-of-love
light-of-the-spirit
painful-memories
self-analysis
treatment
healing-the-past
spiritual-healing
spiritual-wisdom
grief-and-loss
therapy
ego
self-help
|
Marianne Williamson |
|
f966937
|
"I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play the buffoon, for you are, every one of you, stupider and lower than I." He longed to revenge himself on every one for his own unseemliness. He suddenly recalled how he had once in the past been asked, "Why do you hate so and so, so much?" And he had answered them, with his shameless impudence, "I'll tell you. He has done me no harm. But I played him a dirty trick, and ever since I have hated him."
|
|
hatred
intelligence
ego
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
|
0116b22
|
The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.
|
|
glory
ego
|
Tahir Shah |
|
9b3f2f7
|
"You said just now, "Don't be so ashamed of yourself, because that's the root of your trouble"--with those words, you seem to have reached right into my innermost soul. What I mean is, when I visit people, I always feel that I'm really the lowest of the low, that everybody takes me for a buffoon, so I say to myself, why shouldn't I act the fool, I'm not afraid of what any of you might think, because every single one of you is even worse than me. That's why I'm a buffoon, I'm a buffoon born of shame, great starets, of shame. It's anxiety pure and simple that makes me so unruly."
|
|
buffoonery
melodrama
confession
ego
shame
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
|
6796e62
|
Zafar argues that the greatest influence on a writer may be on her psychic dispositions as a writer. Reading Philip Roth, writes Zafar, might clear the way of inhibitions that held you back from writing about reckless desire, the temptations of power, and the immanence of rage, or reading Naipaul might convince you to seize the ego that so wants to be loved, drag it outside, put it up against a wall, and shoot it.
|
|
writing
ego
writers
|
Zia Haider Rahman |
|
f5c4e74
|
There are good ways and bad ways to get my attention. Whacking on my ego with a crowbar will get my attention, sure, but it's not going to leave me well disposed to the messenger.
|
|
delivery
getting-attention
messenger
ego
|
Charles Stross |
|
c3efcec
|
We have only minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort - other people's validation, recognition, rewards. It's far better when doing the work itself is sufficient. When fulfilling our own internal standards is what fills us with pride and self-respect. The less attached we are to the outcomes, the better. Our ego wants recognition & compensation. We have expectations. Let the effort, not the results be enough. Maybe your parents/kids/partner/etc won't be impressed. We can't let THAT be what motivates us. We can change the definition of success to: 'peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.' With this definition we decide not to let externals determine if something is worth doing. It's on us.
|
|
motivation
egoism
peace-of-mind
ego
self-respect
pride
|
Ryan Holiday |
|
c49a9be
|
Thinking he knows can be a trap. An ex-professor once told him he had a diamond-hard intellect and he'd been flattered at the time. Now he considers the nature of diamonds. Although sharp and glittering and useful for cutting glass, they shine with reflected light only. They're no use at all in the dark
|
|
ego
intellect
|
Margaret Atwood |
|
fe39a5e
|
True humility emerges from a sense of wonder and awe. It's an appreciation that our time on earth is limited but that there's something timeless at the core of every being. Embracing humility liberates us from the egotism that drives both perfectionism and self-sabotage, opening us to a deeper experience of self-worth.
|
|
ego
being
humility
self-worth
|
Michael J Gelb |
|
81f2746
|
"Deslumbrado y alterado por esa luz, pero tambien por ser unicamente el doctor Pasavento, quise creer que todo lo que me pasaba era, simple y llanamente, producto de una fuerte resaca. Porque si uno lo pensaba bien, ?era verosimil que durante toda la noche un medico, sin duda monstruoso, probablemente un neuroquimico del cerebro, me hubiera implantado la memoria de doctor Pasavento?" Doctor Pasavento. Enrique Vila-Matas (Satan Vivo). p. 172."
|
|
ego
mente
pasavento
vila-matas
|
Enrique Vila-Matas |
|
6d0a129
|
Kissinger would probably be outraged even if he reread his own memoirs, on the grounds that they are not favorable enough.
|
|
self-criticism
ego
reflection
humility
|
Walter Isaacson |
|
2b6fb14
|
At some time during the process, [of writing] I came up with a therapeutic device. After each draft I would tear up the pages and feed the paper to a worm compost I keep in my garage. A few months later, those painful pages were dirt that nourished my yard, which I could walk with bare feet. It was a real and tangible connection to that larger immensity. I liked to remind myself that the same process is going to happen to me when I'm done, when I die and nature tears me up...
|
|
shortcoming
ego
humility
self-delusion
|
Ryan Holiday |
|
729b85a
|
"Mitch," he said, "the culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die. We're so wrapped up in egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks - we're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?"
|
|
encourage
life
reflect
missing
think
ego
die
|
Mitch Albom |