Self Fulfillment Quotes

“It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Do not look for happiness outside yourself. The awakened seek happiness inside.”
― Peter Deunov

“The joy in life is his who has the heart to demand it.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“I promise you that the same stuff galaxies are made of, you are. The same energy that swings planets around stars makes electrons dance in your heart. It is in you, outside you, you are it. It is beautiful. Trust in this. And you your life will be grand.”
― Kamal Ravikant, Live Your Truth

“Dear me, one day I'll make you proud.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“Finding an access to the ‘open public space’ is the challenge that really matters in life. We may know that everyone might feel like an alien to someone else or sometimes even to oneself, whether native, foreigner or exile, whether assimilated or singular, whether straight or gay. Be that as it may, a basic premise for the safeguard of self-fulfillment is the availability of a comforting maneuvering ground for one and all and an opportunity to enter a 'space of appearance' with a gate to a ‘citizenship of the world’. ("His master's voice" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Maybe [the ocean and I] were on the same side, comprised of the same things, water mostly, also mystery. The ocean swallowed things up--boats, people--but it didn't look outside itself for fulfillment. It could take whatever skimmed its surface or it could leave it. In its depths already lived a whole world of who-knows-what. It was self-sustaining. I should be like that. It made me wonder what was inside of me.”
― Melissa Broder, The Pisces

“We find what we are looking for in life, her father had once said to her, which was true—if you look for happiness, you will see it; if you look for distrust and envy and hatred—all those things—you will find those too.”
― Alexander McCall Smith , The Full Cupboard of Life

“A lonely impulse of delight”
― W.B. Yeats

“It’s only when we can work with something that brings out our strengths that we’re of any real use.”
― Henning Mankell, The Fifth Woman

“In this America, too, the Christian teaching that every human soul is unique and precious has been stressed, by the prophets of self-fulfillment and gurus of self-love, at the expense of the equally important teaching that every human soul is fatally corrupted by original sin. Absent the latter emphasis, religion becomes a license for egotism and selfishness, easily employed to justify what used to be considered deadly sins. The result is a society where pride becomes 'healthy self-esteem', vanity becomes 'self-improvement', adultery becomes 'following your heart', greed and gluttony become 'living the American dream'.”
― Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

“Men can, of course, be stirred into life by being dressed up in uniforms and made to blare out chants of war. It must be confessed that this is one way for men to break bread with comrades and to find what they are seeking, which is a sense of something universal, of self-fulfillment. But of this bread men die.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, A Sense Of Life

“Everywhere today, in fact, the ideology of competition gives way to a 'philosophy' of self-fulfillment. In a more integrated society individuals no longer compete for the possession of goods, they actualize themselves in consumption.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects

“Don’t ”be yourself”, but work on yourself. Don’t ”be who you are”, but be who you ought. Don’t ”follow your dreams”, but face your realities. And don’t ”live your life”, but live a respectable life. Then you will find out that you cannot do everything, but at least you have to do something.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“Wealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor. What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is. And so the wealthy young man who comes to Jesus is represented as a thoroughly good citizen, who has broken none of the laws of his state, none of the commandments of his religion. He is quite respectable, in the ordinary sense of that extraordinary word. Jesus says to him, ‘You should give up private property. It hinders you from realising your perfection. It is a drag upon you. It is a burden. Your personality does not need it. It is within you, and not outside of you, that you will find what you really are, and what you really want.’ To his own friends he says the same thing. He tells them to be themselves, and not to be always worrying about other things. What do other things matter? Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates Individualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

“You are fully and magnificently equipped to stand up and change the world around you. And to simply sit down and tolerate the world around you is to squander who you are in the process of never being who you are.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“But these were days of self-fulfilment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something everybody should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Look around and see whom you can serve. This will fill you.”
― Anne Lamott, Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

“Only those who value self-knowledge over self-satisfaction can achieve wisdom, only those who value self-perfection over "self-fulfilment" can retain dignity, and only those who value self-discipline over self-indulgence can enjoy liberty.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“Our addictions make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests in 'the distant country,' leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled.”
― Henri Nouwen

“What we depend upon for happiness and a sense of fulfillment is reflective of our self-giving character forged through a variety of evocative experiences.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“No one wants to live out a narrow life, have his or her life story read as a stale cliché. The test for a self-fulfilled person is to establish their objectives, stay true to personal goals and values, while operating in a society that might embrace them, hate them, or might be utterly neutral, unacquainted, and indifferent to their existence.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The logical thinking ability of the conscious mind evolves as we mature. The clutter of capricious milieu relegated to the capacious matrix of the unconscious mind expands as we encounter variegated mileposts in life. Scrambled drives and conflicting motives influence formation of the conscious and unconscious self. Some of my previous apex personal motives and accomplishments are now repugnant to me. I seek to realign motives, drives, and desires of the conscious and unconscious mind into an orderly system in order to reduce anxiety and to reach self-fulfillment.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Unselfishly loving other people and extending compassion to everyone is essential to live an honorable, happy, and self-fulfilling life. A person must fearlessly love in an uninhibited manner and express their love in an open manner without reservation or qualification.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster

“The more that a person immerses themselves into a body of work that calls upon them to draw their life sustaining sustenance from an internal well of compassion the closer a person comes to developing, maintaining, and displaying the wholesome glow radiating from a peaceful mind.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The ultimate responsibility for your happiness lies with you. Make sure you do not outsource it to anyone else.”
― Gift Gugu Mona, Dear Daughter: Short and Sweet Messages for a Queen

“What you are seeking is seeking you. Don't waste your time searching for something that is already within you.”
― Sam Izad, Snackable Existentialism: Small Portions, Big Ideas

“Taking us all to an everlasting fairy-tale
Of our own creation.”
― Lowrey E. Gray, 42

“Securing your insecurities correctly can be beneficial to your present self.”
― Angel Moreira

“Physical diseases are not our best enemies. It is the loss of intimacy, love and inner understanding about sexuality including diminishing romantic attitudes that undermine our effort to be happy and self-fulfilled.”
― Master Del Pe, Sexual Alchemy & Divine Intimacy