Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignation with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed. Joan Didion
Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect
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George Sand
Walk tall, or baby don't walk at all.
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Bruce Springsteen
There is only one real misfortune: to forfeit one's own good opinion of oneself. Lose your complacency, once betray your own self-contempt and the world will unhesitatingly endorse it.
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Thomas Mann
Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy.
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Robert Tew
A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack
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Ayn Rand
More Quotes By Joan Didion
Character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life – is the source from which self-respect springs.
I tell you this true story just to prove that I can. That my frailty has not yet reached a point at which I can no longer tell a true story.
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the...
Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?
