Theme

Self

Character, habit, and the person you are when no one is grading you. The Stoics begin this shelf. Later writers refuse to let it stay only private.

1. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.Maya AngelouI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
2. Moral virtue comes about as a result of habit.AristotleNicomachean Ethics
3. Thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is restless until it rests in thee.Augustine of HippoConfessions
4. In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present — I am rising to the work of a human being.Marcus AureliusMeditations
5. Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to…Marcus AureliusMeditations
6. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.James BaldwinThe Fire Next Time
7. One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.Simone de BeauvoirThe Second Sex
8. I will seize fate by the throat. It shall not wholly overcome me.Ludwig van BeethovenLetter to Franz Wegeler
9. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river.Jorge Luis BorgesA New Refutation of Time
10. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.Albert CamusThe Myth of Sisyphus
11. I know who I am, and who I may be, if I choose.Miguel de CervantesDon Quixote
12. I think, therefore I am.René DescartesDiscourse on the Method
13. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.Joan DidionThe White Album
14. Above all, don’t lie to yourself.Fyodor DostoevskyThe Brothers Karamazov
15. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.Eleanor RooseveltYou Learn by Living
16. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.Ralph Waldo EmersonSelf-Reliance
17. Of things, some are in our power, and others are not.EpictetusEnchiridion
18. Death is nothing to us. When we are, death is not come; and when death is come, we are not.EpicurusLetter to Menoeceus
19. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.Richard FeynmanCargo Cult Science
20. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.Viktor FranklMan’s Search for Meaning
21. Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.Benjamin FranklinPoor Richard’s Almanack
22. The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.Sigmund FreudThe Interpretation of Dreams
23. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.Robert FrostThe Road Not Taken
24. You have a right to the work alone, never to its fruits. Let not the fruit of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.The Bhagavad GitaBhagavad Gita
25. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?HillelPirkei Avot
26. I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.Zora Neale HurstonHow It Feels to Be Colored Me
27. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.Carl JungMemories, Dreams, Reflections
28. Call me Ishmael.Herman MelvilleMoby-Dick
29. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.John Stuart MillOn Liberty
30. I am a musician.Wolfgang Amadeus MozartLetter to his father
31. What does not kill me makes me stronger.Friedrich NietzscheTwilight of the Idols
32. If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how.Friedrich NietzscheTwilight of the Idols
33. Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.Blaise PascalPensées
34. Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition.Octavio PazThe Labyrinth of Solitude
35. I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.Sylvia PlathThe Bell Jar
36. You must change your life.Rainer Maria RilkeArchaic Torso of Apollo
37. Hell is other people.Jean-Paul SartreNo Exit
38. It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.SenecaOn the Shortness of Life
39. To be, or not to be, that is the question.William ShakespeareHamlet
40. We ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to any one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him.SocratesPlato, Crito
41. The unexamined life is not worth living.SocratesPlato, Apology
42. The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.Aleksandr SolzhenitsynThe Gulag Archipelago
43. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.Henry David ThoreauWalden
44. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.Henry David ThoreauWalden
45. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.Mark TwainNotebook
46. Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)Walt WhitmanSong of Myself
47. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.Oscar WildeLady Windermere’s Fan
48. I can resist everything except temptation.Oscar WildeLady Windermere’s Fan
49. The Child is father of the Man.William WordsworthMy Heart Leaps Up

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