Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.
— The Picture of Dorian Gray
Quotes About Ego
Robert Frost named egotism the worst disease that can afflict executives, worse than the alcoholism people suppose. Carl Jung saw midlife as the time to let go of an overdominant ego and contemplate the deeper significance of human existence. Rumi called the ego a veil between humans and God.
Some of the most candid lines come from people who knew fame. John Lennon admitted that part of him suspected he was a loser while the other part thought he was God Almighty. George Harrison said popularity and fame come easily if you have that ego desire. George Clooney observed that you never really learn much from hearing yourself speak. Leo Tolstoy recorded the same struggle as a plea: what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem. The Buddha offered a simple test, asking whether a feeling is an ego high or a peaceful high.
Some of the most candid lines come from people who knew fame. John Lennon admitted that part of him suspected he was a loser while the other part thought he was God Almighty. George Harrison said popularity and fame come easily if you have that ego desire. George Clooney observed that you never really learn much from hearing yourself speak. Leo Tolstoy recorded the same struggle as a plea: what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem. The Buddha offered a simple test, asking whether a feeling is an ego high or a peaceful high.
My Ego taught me a new pride, I teach it to men: No longer to bury the head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head which creates meaning for the earth!
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra
You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones.
— Emma
If pimps and thieves were invariably sentenced, all decent people would get to thinking they themselves were constantly innocent.
— The Fall
...love must feel the ego of the beloved person as important as one's own ego, and must realize the other's feelings and wishes as though they were one's own.
— Marriage and Morals
Once we are lost unto ourselves, everything else is lost to us.
— The Sorrows of Young Werther
Very well, young man, very well," Treville went on, "I know those airs. I came to Paris with four ecus in my pocket, and I'd have fought with anybody who told me I was in no condition to buy the Louvre.
— The Three Musketeers
He [Eugène Rougon] believed exclusively in himself; where another saw reasons, Rougon possessed convictions; he subordinated everything to the incessant aggrandisement of his own ego. Despite being utterly devoid of real self-indulgence, he nevertheless indulged in secret orgies of supreme power.
— His Excellency
The Ego is a veil between humans and God’.”“In prayer all are equal.
The existence of the writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obviously taken flight from the real ego, but not improved itself, only become a writer.
Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego freedom to decide one way or another.
Is this an ego high or a peaceful high?
Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.
Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.
You said just now, "Don't be so ashamed of yourself, because that's the root of your trouble"––with those words, you seem to have reached right into my innermost soul. What I mean is, when I visit people, I always feel that I'm really the lowest of the low, that everybody takes me for a buffoon, so I say to myself, why shouldn't I act the fool, I'm not afraid of what any of you might think, because every single one of you is even worse than me. That's why I'm a buffoon, I'm a buffoon born of shame, great starets, of shame. It's anxiety pure and simple that makes me so unruly.
— The Brothers Karamazov
A man's car is like an extension of their ego and their manhood.
oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men's esteem?
People talk about egos as if it were objects.
Who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this, for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.
— The Complete Works
Tom Sawyer the Pirate looked around upon the envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was the proudest moment of his life.
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues — faith and hope.
— Nicholas Nickleby
He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.
— The Old Man and the Sea
Nothing is more scandalous than a man that is proud of his humility.
— Meditations
All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.
— Antigone