Self Referents

[Guest guest]

In the end, everybody must understand for themselves. -- Martin-Lof

 

Nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the

path that leads to himself. -- Herman Hesse

 

I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to

their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory,

downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression. --

Dylan Thomas

 

Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate

and captain of your soul.

 

What will you do if all your problems aren't solved by the time you

die?

 

What you resist persists.

 

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. --

John Lennon, Beautiful Boy

 

There seems no plan because it is all plan. -- C.S. Lewis

 

In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is

not always an easy sacrifice.

 

A witty saying proves nothing. -- Voltaire

 

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. -- Ralph

Waldo Emerson

 

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking. -

- H.L. Mencken

 

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends. -- H. L. Mencken

 

Conscious is when you are aware of something, and conscience is when

you wish you weren't. -- H. L. Mencken

 

Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.

 

When you imagine you have reached a certain degree of detachment, you

regard as histrionic all zealots ... But doesn't detachment, too,

have a histrionics of its own? If actions are mummery, the very

refusal of action is one as well. Yet a noble mummery. -- E. M. Cioran

 

Do you think for yourself, or do you just think you think for

yourself?

 

Subvert the system that perverts the mind.

 

f you spend too long around people just like yourself, the windows

steam up and turn into mirrors. -- attributed to Robert Wyatt in

Andrew Orlowski's Back in the Bloghouse

From this self-referential hall of mirrors, very little light

escapes. -- Andrew Orlowski, Back in the Bloghouse

What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? --

Roethke

One is often kept in the right road by a rut. -- Gustave Droz

The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.

Modesty: The gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to

be aware of it. -- Oliver Herford

Modesty, n.: Being comfortable that others will discover your

greatness.

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more

than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion

of himself than on the opinion of others. -- Marcus Aurelius,

Meditations

Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this: that you are dreadfully

like other people. -- James Russell Lowell, My Study Windows

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. -- Eleanor

Roosevelt

We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other

people. -- La Rochefoucauld

Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that

now I can remember things that *have* happened before ...

You will be awarded a medal for disregarding safety in saving someone.

'Be yourself' is about the worst advice you can give to people. --

Tom Masson

If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we

would be so simple we couldn't.

I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my

body. Then I realized who was telling me this. -- Emo Phillips

Be careful how you get yourself involved with persons or situations

that can't bear inspection.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an

understanding of ourselves -- C. G. Jung

My, how you've changed since I've changed.

Every move they make is a message from outside, a shadow marking

their shape, information about them. We'll take it. -- Lois McMaster

Bujold, Borders of Infinity

Difficulties are things that show what men are. -- Epictetus, Chap.

xxiv.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are

the easiest person to fool. -- Richard Feynman

If you are not for yourself, who will be for you? If you are for

yourself, then what are you? If not now, when?

You may be gone tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that you weren't here

today.

Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.

If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going. --

Professor Irwin Corey

Troubles are like babies; they only grow by nursing.

The wise man seeks everything in himself; the ignorant man tries to

get everything from somebody else.

Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

This life is yours. Some of it was given to you; the rest, you made

yourself.

I'm like a sort of living carpet. I need a pattern, a design, like

you have on that carpet. I come apart, I unravel, unless there's a

design. -- Rebecca (from: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by

Oliver Sacks)

Be eccentric to yourself -- Jacques Lacan (?)

I became disillusioned with some of the delusions. -- John Nash, 60

Minutes interview regarding his schizophrenia adaptation

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness. -- Aristotle

[being slightly mad does not necessarily indicate an excellent soul. -

Ed.]

A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there

himself. -- Du Bois

Self Test for Paranoia: You know you have it when you can't think of

anything that's your own fault.

They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!

As a general rule, men expect disappointment: they know they must not

be impatient, that it will come soon or later, that it will hold off

long enough for them to proceed with their undertakings of the

moment. The disabused man is different: for him, disappointment

occurs at the same time as the deed; he has no need to await it, it

is present. -- E. M. Cioran

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on

society. -- Mark Twain

Who alone has reason to lie himself out of actuality? He who suffers

from it. -- Friedrich Nietzsche (?)

No matter where you go, there you are. -- Buckaroo Banzai

First Rule of Holes: When you're in one, you should stop digging.

The duration of our passions is no more dependent upon us than the

duration of our life. -- La Rochefoucauld

A philosophy professor is giving a class lecture on solipsism (the

theory that reality is a creation of ones mind). After the lecture,

several students rush up and introduce themselves to the professor

and explain that the theory was really in-tune with how they felt and

its really opened their minds and they just wanted to tell him in

person how they felt about his lecture ... to which the professor

replies " That's wonderful, so rarely does one solipsist meet another. "

The feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain-

process: how does it come about that this does not come into the

considerations of our ordinary life? This idea of a difference in

kind is accompanied by slight giddiness - which occurs when we are

performing a piece of logical sleight-of-hand. (The same giddiness

attacks us when we think of certain theorems in set theory.) When

does this feeling occur in the present case? It is when, I, for

example, turn my attention in a particular way on to my own

consciousness, and, astonished, say to myself: THIS is supposed to be

produced by a process in the brain! - as it were clutching my

forehead. - But what can it mean to speak of " turning my attention on

to my own consciousness? " This is surely the queerest thing there

could be! ... -- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Philosophical

Investigations

Is knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know that?

The door is the key.

When one looks into the abyss, the abyss looks into you. -- Nietzsche

Consistency is a disease, and I'm the cure. -- Nietzsche (?)

In these matters the only certainty is that there is nothing

certain. -- Pliny the Elder

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same

river and he's not the same man. -- Heraclitas (c. 535-475 BC, see

also: selected fragments, the fire priest)

- After reading Heraclitus, Socrates is reported to have said: " The

concepts I understand are great, but I believe that the concepts I

can't understand are great too. However, the reader needs to be an

excellent swimmer ... so as not to drown from his book. " (Diogenis

Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Socrates 22)

You are scrupulously honest, frank, and straightforward. Therefore

you have few friends.

You have taken yourself too seriously.

(who's frank?)........bob