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Like the rest of the genetic lottery, beauty is unfair. Everyone falls short of perfection, but some are luckier than others. Real confidence requires self-knowledge, which includes recognizing one's shortcomings as well as one's strengths.


Virginia Postrel

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Luckier than one's neighbor, but still not happy.
EURIPIDES In terms of popular cinema, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is as near perfection as I...
PETER MULLAN Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
CONFUCIUS The awareness of the ambiguity of one's highest achievements (as well as one's deepest failu...
PAUL TILLICH If there's one theme in all my work, it's about authenticity and self-expression. It's t...
BERNARD WILLIAMS With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build ...
DALAI LAMA Somehow our society has formed a one-sided view of the human personality, and for some reason everyo...
LEV VYGOTSKY The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind.
F. H. BRADLEY Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE The sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called Liberty.
ALBERT PIKE What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE As the possessor of complete knowledge, God is not mistaken about people's experiences as people...
EDITH STEIN Inner beauty should be the most important part of improving one's self.
PRISCILLA PRESLEY The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD Employers have recognized for some time that it's smart business to have a diverse workforce - o...
THOMAS PEREZ I loved 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.' I read it later as an adult, but I loved 'We Have Al...
SUZANNE COLLINS But the beauty of Einstein's equations, for example, is just as real to anyone who's experie...
EDWARD WITTEN It is, finally, a word is untimely in three different senses, and bearing it as one's treasure w...
HANS URS VON BALTHASAR Some genetic variants can be informative about one's risk for Parkinson's disease and Alzhei...
ANNE WOJCICKI It's easy to say young people should believe in themselves, but the number one thing is recogniz...
ANDREW SHUE It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, y...
THOMAS SZASZ What is the meaning of 'gossip?' Doesn't it originate with sympathy, an interest in one&...
LUCY LARCOM The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part ...
ELIZABETH BOWEN The happiness of one's own heart alone cannot satisfy the soul; one must try to include, as nece...
PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA 'Stargate SG-1' is one of Sci Fi's sure-fire hits. It's got one of the best ensemble...
BONNIE HAMMER How do you try to play 'Captain Hook' better than, or as well as, Dustin Hoffman? You can...
COLIN O'DONOGHUE Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by enterin...
CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL He said that academia reminded him of a badly run circus. The faculty members were like underfed ani...
SUSAN HUBBARD 'Mr Selfridge' is a lot more accessible than shows like 'Downton.' Everyone knows th...
ZOE TAPPER One has a responsibility to clean up one's space and make it livable as far as one's own res...
WOLE SOYINKA The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and...
RALPH ELLISON I think it's unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair; that&#...
ALBERT ELLIS We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain a...
POPE BENEDICT XVI Self-discipline is an act of cultivation. It requires you to connect today's actions to tomorrow...
GARY RYAN BLAIR To guard and to deal with others' goods as one's own is considered as the mark of proper tra...
THIRUVALLUVAR Spiritual formation is character formation. Everyone gets a spiritual formation. It's like educa...
DALLAS WILLARD I think some cases are different than others, but all of the child actors that I have encountered, a...
MACKENZIE FOY I think of the part of me that writes as the most private self. It's the part that's engaged...
BILL CLEGG Being funny, it turns out, is like being a bank. It's a confidence trick. As long as everyone be...
EVAN DAVIS The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others bu...
ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others bu...
ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS I think of all my movies as home movies! It's just that some are more expensive than others.
D. A. PENNEBAKER One of the things that I think makes me successful is the way in which I collaborate with others. In...
NICK HANAUER I'd say, specifically after 'Get Smart,' people now know me either as The Guy from '...
NATE TORRENCE There is no respect for others without humility in one's self.
HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.
CHARLES DICKENS I don't think homosexuality is a choice. Society forces you to think it's a choice, but in f...
MARLO THOMAS To know one's self is wisdom, but not to know one's neighbors is genius.
MINNA ANTRIM The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one...
GEORGE ORWELL Humor writing requires a rhythm and timing, as well as some kind of connection to the reader, and I ...
KRISTAN HIGGINS Everyone's unique; no one's ever alike. But my son has the same good cheer as my father. He&...
JON VOIGHT There's only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for t...
ALDOUS HUXLEY They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignor...
TERRY PRATCHETT One of Alaska's strengths is our pioneer role in environmentally sensitive development.
FRANK MURKOWSKI There's one more thing I want to say. It's a touchy subject. Black beauty. Black sensuality....
JODY WATLEY Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-estee...
THOMAS SZASZ I've seen the majestic beauty of nature and the overwhelming perfection of it. To me, there'...
COTE DE PABLO Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity ...
JOSEPH CONRAD We are learning, too, that the love of beauty is one of Nature's greatest healers.
ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON It is better to destroy one's own errors than those of others.
DEMOCRITUS 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' is just one of those movies that's like a page of history. You...
DIORA BAIRD Sometimes the way you respond to horrific, evil deeds is the measure of one's self as a man, as ...
JAMES WOODS The Nordic countries are leading the way on women's equality, recognizing women as equal citizen...
JOHANNA SIGUROARDOTTIR That's a lovely starting point for me as an actor: the question of what will we - or can we - do...
EDDIE REDMAYNE Strengthening our identity is one way of reinforcing people's confidence and sense of citizenshi...
DAVID BLUNKETT Honestly, I just think we all have special gifts, everyone. You know, obviously, some are more notic...
KELLY CLARKSON Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious...
LORD ACTON One mustn't close one's eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them...
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN One's own self-worth is tied to the worth of the community to which one belongs, which is intima...
WOLE SOYINKA One of London's massive strengths is its sporting prowess, its great football teams.
GEORGE OSBORNE To me idealized characters are so boring to play, especially having grown up in the classical theate...
ANNETTE BENING I read people; that's one of my strengths. It's not that I can't be fooled, but I'm ...
JACK KEANE Enhance and intensify one's vision of that synthesis of truth and beauty which is the highest an...
OVID I'm essentially a humorist and, I think, a pretty good one. I've known all along that 'M...
DERF There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know ...
KARL WILHELM FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL I think it's a short story writer's duty, as well as writing well about emotions and charact...
ERIC BROWN For us, from Korea's perspective, China is the number one investment destination as well as numb...
LEE MYUNG-BAK I have this assemblage of small facts, which looks like intelligence but no real depth of knowledge ...
WAYNE KNIGHT I'm sure I'm a schizophrenic. The problem is I can't tell the difference between which o...
NICK RHODES One of the hardest aspects of this protracted public persona is not knowing others as well as they f...
CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT I'm still a big 'Grey's Anatomy' fan.
BROOKE ELLIOTT I used to watch 'Grey's Anatomy' pretty religiously.
ERINN HAYES Greed is the lack of confidence of one's own ability to create.
VANNA BONTA Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, on...
DONNA TARTT 'Heel Turn 2' is about a person who's in a match, and he's playing as though the mat...
JOHN DARNIELLE I mean, the part you don't like, I mean, that's the only part. That's the part no one li...
LAURA BUSH Silicon Valley tends to be very myopic - to be focused on one or two things - which has some strengt...
REID HOFFMAN It is like visiting one's funeral, like visiting loss in its purest and most monumental form, th...
HAROLD BRODKEY It's funny, but on a set there's a pecking order. There's a caste system, you know? It g...
PETER JASON One person's roar is another's whine, just as one person's music is another's unendu...
HENRY ROLLINS It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's sel...
W. E. B. DU BOIS To disclose too much of one's inventions and achievements is one and the same thing as to give u...
FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI A woman's beauty is one of her great missions.
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE Even if one is interested only in one's own society, which is one's prerogative, one can und...
PETER L. BERGER One's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes.
ANDREW WYETH By every measure, John Kennedy's sex life was compulsive and reckless. At one level, it had clea...
JEFF GREENFIELD I have done some wonderful television, but you know, there's not as much exceptional material as...
LINDSAY DUNCAN Nobody, from that standpoint, is any luckier than I am or will ever be any luckier than I am. It'...
BOOMER ESIASON It is common knowledge that smoking is considered one of the nation's leading causes of preventa...
ED MARKEY

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VIRGINIA WOOLF Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in c...
VIRGINIA WOOLF To have a successful writing career, you must be willing to sacrifice a great deal. The book, the de...
VIRGINIA HENLEY We have a responsibility to help those around us and help others in need.
VIRGINIA WILLIAMS One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as w...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends c...
VIRGINIA WOOLF I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It exp...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and t...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.
VIRGINIA WOOLF Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.
VIRGINIA WOOLF It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.
VIRGINIA WOOLF Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is writ...
VIRGINIA WOOLF As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.
VIRGINIA WOOLF So much is asked of parents, and so little is given.
VIRGINIA SATIR We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us.
VIRGINIA SATIR Life is not what it's supposed to be. It's what it is. The way you cope with it is what make...
VIRGINIA SATIR Problems are not the problem; coping is the problem.
VIRGINIA SATIR There is an abundance of misinformation, exaggeration, and blatant lies being spread by interest gro...
VIRGINIA FOXX It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or...
VIRGINIA WOOLF The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but ...
VIRGINIA WOOLF So the days pass, and I ask myself whether one is not hypnotized, as a child by a silver globe, by l...
VIRGINIA WOOLF For love... has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It h...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all ...
VIRGINIA WOOLF All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point
VIRGINIA WOOLF Novels so often provide an anodyne and not an antidote, glide one into torpid slumbers instead of ro...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written ...
VIRGINIA WOOLF I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again -- as I always am when I...
VIRGINIA WOOLF We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.
VIRGINIA WOOLF I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by the...
VIRGINIA SATIR Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!
VIRGINIA WOOLF It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entir...
VIRGINIA WOOLF The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.
VIRGINIA WOOLF Now, aged 50, I'm just poised to shoot forth quite free straight and undeflected my bolts whatever t...
VIRGINIA WOOLF At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.
VIRGINIA WOOLF These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect t...
VIRGINIA WOOLF It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.
VIRGINIA WOOLF I hope Britney doesn't get bummed out that Lindsey is a better singer. It is not Lindsey saying ...
VIRGINIA MADSEN If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not abo...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.
VIRGINIA WOOLF My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring...
VIRGINIA WOOLF We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by fi...
VIRGINIA WOOLF I feel certain that I'm going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times....
VIRGINIA WOOLF As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.
VIRGINIA WOOLF What is amusing now had to be taken in desperate earnest once.
VIRGINIA WOOLF It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and...
VIRGINIA WOOLF I always felt that I hadn't achieved what I wanted to achieve. I always felt I could get better. Tha...
VIRGINIA WADE My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery --always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring...
VIRGINIA WOOLF It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if...
VIRGINIA WOOLF If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure -- the relationship so secret and private compa...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?
VIRGINIA WOOLF All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority an...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to t...
VIRGINIA WOOLF But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in,...
VIRGINIA WOOLF It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handlin...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.
VIRGINIA WOOLF Inevitably we look upon society, so kind to you, so harsh to us, as an ill-fitting form that distort...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned...
VIRGINIA WOOLF The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the poli...
VIRGINIA WOOLF That great Cathedral space which was childhood.
VIRGINIA WOOLF The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.
VIRGINIA WOOLF Young women... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of an...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or
VIRGINIA WOOLF Our brave soldiers and support personnel are engaged in a battle as important as any the United Stat...
VIRGINIA FOXX Fly high... Where the only chill that cuts through you is the wind. Where your heart pounds from exh...
VIRGINIA ALISON When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred.
VIRGINIA WOOLF We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying, even t...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human...
VIRGINIA WOOLF The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to fol...
VIRGINIA WOOLF If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about e...
VIRGINIA WOOLF A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in t...
VIRGINIA WOOLF One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than whe...
VIRGINIA WOOLF The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.
VIRGINIA WOOLF Boredom is the legitimate kingdom of the philanthropic.
VIRGINIA WOOLF It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with...
VIRGINIA WOOLF To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.
VIRGINIA WOOLF Henry James seems most entirely in his element, doing that is to say what everything favors his doin...
VIRGINIA WOOLF No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.
VIRGINIA WOOLF As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.
VIRGINIA WOOLF When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.
VIRGINIA WOOLF If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
VIRGINIA WOOLF I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It exp...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Books are the mirrors of the soul.
VIRGINIA WOOLF I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, re...
VIRGINIA WOOLF To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.
VIRGINIA WOOLF Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever ...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night.
VIRGINIA WOOLF Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems.
VIRGINIA WOOLF The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.
VIRGINIA WOOLF Yet Byron never made tea as you do, who fill the pot so that when you put the lid on the tea spills ...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Just in case you ever foolishly forget; I'm never not thinking of you.
VIRGINIA WOOLF One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
VIRGINIA WOOLF Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of...
VIRGINIA WOOLF A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her c...
VIRGINIA WOOLF The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as s...
VIRGINIA WOOLF But it is just when opinions universally prevail and we have added lip service to their authority th...
VIRGINIA WOOLF The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only...
VIRGINIA WOOLF Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.
VIRGINIA WOOLF There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intell...
VIRGINIA WOOLF I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and w...
VIRGINIA WOOLF I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure.
VIRGINIA WOOLF Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before...
VIRGINIA WOOLF