Other people’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality.
—Les Brown
You should examine yourself daily. If you find faults, you should correct them. When you find none, you should try even harder.
—Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) English Playwright, Novelist, Zionist Activist
Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.
—Clint Eastwood (b.1930) American Film Director, Film Producer, Film Actor
The white light streams down to be broken up by those human prisms into all the colors of the rainbow. Take your own color in the pattern and be just that.
—Charles Reynolds Brown (1862–1950) American Clergyman
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
Respecting yourself means listening to your body and emotions continuously. Then acting beyond a linear logic to achieve ones goals.
—Unknown
To have a respect for ourselves guides our morals; and to have a deference for others governs our manners.
—Laurence Sterne (1713–68) Irish Anglican Novelist, Clergyman
I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man’s self-respect is a sin.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–44) French Novelist, Aviator
Each of us needs time for mental self-renewal.
—Whitt N. Schultz (1920–84) American Self-Help Author
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
—Frederick Douglass (1817–95) American Abolitionist, Author, Editor, Diplomat, Political leader
He who is ashamed will not easily commit sin.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
It may be no less dangerous to claim, on certain occasions, too little than too much. There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
One of the very best of all earthly possessions is self-possession.
—George D. Prentice (1802–70) American Journalist, Editor
No more duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–80) American Preacher, Poet
Have not too low thoughts of thyself. The confidence a man hath of his being pleasant in his demeanor is a means whereby he infallibly cometh to be such.
—Richard Burton (1925–84) Welsh Actor
The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs.
—Joan Didion (1934–2021) American Essayist, Novelist, Memoirist
Every one stamps his own value on himself.—The price we challenge for ourselves is given us.—Man is made great or little by his own will.
—Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German Poet, Dramatist
Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect, you have enough.
—Gail Sheehy (1936–2020) American Writer, Journalist
He that respects himself is safe from others; he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
Self-respect is nothing to hide behind. When you need it most it isn’t there.
—May Sarton (1912–95) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Novelist
There is a great difference between him who is ashamed before his own self and him who is only ashamed before others.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.
—John Stuart Mill (1806–73) English Philosopher, Economist
There is hope for a man who is capable of being ashamed.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
Without self-respect there can be no genuine success. Success won at the cost of self-respect is not success? For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own self-respect.
—B. C. Forbes (1880–1954) Scottish-born American Journalist, Publisher
Self-respect…that corner-stone of all virtue.
—John Herschel (1792–1871) English Mathematician, Astronomer, Chemist
I care not so much what I am in the opinion of others as what I am in my own; I would be rich of myself and not by borrowing.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
—Frederick Douglass (1817–95) American Abolitionist, Author, Editor, Diplomat, Political leader