If you can look at yourself without condemning what you see, without comparing yourself with somebody else, without wishing to be more beautiful or more virtuous; if you can just observe what you are and move with it, then you will find that it is possible to go infinitely far. Then there is no end to the journey, and that is the mystery, the beauty of it.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti in Think on These Things
It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld
I hope you do not let anyone else’s expectations direct the course of your life.
—Julianne Donaldson in Edenbrooke
Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
—Iris Murdoch
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.
—Charles Dickens
We can let go of the person or love or friendship without letting go of the lesson.
—Mandy Hale in The Single Woman
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
—Virginia Woolf
I keep finding myself stifled by the company of others and then crippled by loneliness when I leave them.
—Veronica Roth in Allegiant
You can’t live your life for other people. You’ve got to do what’s right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.
—Nicholas Sparks in The Notebook
The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.
—Eldridge Cleaver
The more we take the welfare of others to heart and work for their benefit, the more benefit we derive for ourselves. This is a fact we can see. And the more selfish we remain and self-centered, the more selfish our way of life is, the lonelier we feel and the more miserable. This is also a fact we can see.
—14th Dalai Lama
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
—William Hazlitt
No one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head.
—Rachel Cohn in Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares
Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else's can shorten it.
—Cullen Hightower