Ego Quotes

Not everything is about you," Clary said furiously.
"Possibly," Jace said, "but you do have to admit that the majority of things are.

One of the Silent Brothers is here to see you. Hodge sent me to wake you up. Actually he offered to wake you himself, but since it's 5 a.m., I figured you'd be less cranky if you had something nice to look at."
"Meaning you?"
"What else?

Don’t sacrifice yourself too much, because if you sacrifice too much there’s nothing else you can give and nobody will care for you.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.

Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, "What else could this mean?

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.

The problem with introspection is that it has no end.

Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.

Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky, because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you. And you are always following other people, you are always trying to satisfy them. You are always trying to be respectable, you are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal. Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourself…
Whenever you are self-conscious you are simply showing that you are not conscious of the self at all. You don’t know who you are. If you had known, then there would have been no problem— then you are not seeking opinions. Then you are not worried what others say about you— it is irrelevant!
When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don’t know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.

The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do.

Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose

Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.

Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.

There are two circumstances that lead to arrogance: one is when you're wrong and you can't face it; the other is when you're right and nobody else can face it.

You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.

Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment.

If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed.

I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.

In this story
I am the poet
You're the poetry.

The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness.

Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.

A lot of things are inherent in life -change, birth, death, aging, illness, accidents, calamities, and losses of all kinds- but these events don't have to be the cause of ongoing suffering. Yes, these events cause grief and sadness, but grief and sadness pass, like everything else, and are replaced with other experiences. The ego, however, clings to negative thoughts and feelings and, as a result, magnifies, intensifies, and sustains those emotions while the ego overlooks the subtle feelings of joy, gratitude, excitement, adventure, love, and peace that come from Essence. If we dwelt on these positive states as much as we generally dwell on our negative thoughts and painful emotions, our lives would be transformed.

The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.

The Ego is a veil between humans and God’.

In prayer all are equal.

I don't know about your true form, but the weight of your ego sure is pushing the crust of the earth toward the breaking point.

The ego relies on the familiar. It is reluctant to experience the unknown, which is they very essence of life.

And I realized that I’d tolerated him this long because of self-doubt.

The weak are dominated by their ego, the wise dominate their ego, and the intelligent are in a constant struggle against their ego.

No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves

Do you ever lose the ego? Westford asks me.
Yeah. When his daughter kisses me, my ego flies out the window.

Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.

Hate. Huh. He'd never hated himself. If anything, he'd always liked himself a little too much. Once, a human female had even accused him of picturing his own face while he climaxed. He hadn't denied it, either, and next time he'd slept with her, he'd made sure to scream, "Strider" at the pivotal moment."
--Strider, keeper of the demon of Defeat--

The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.

Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.

Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego.

The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.

I don't want to see you. I don't like you. I don't like your face. You look like an insufferable egotist. You're impertinent. You're too sure of yourself. Twenty years ago I would have punched your face with the greatest of pleasure.

How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your service, is the trick.

I don't want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its problems because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.

Time and time again does the pride of man influence his very own fall. While denying it, one gradually starts to believe that he is the authority, or that he possesses great moral dominion over others, yet it is spiritually unwarranted. By that point he loses steam; in result, he falsely begins trying to prove that unwarranted dominion by seizing the role of a condemner.

If someone corrects you, and you feel offended, then you have an ego problem.

The most beautiful women I have known had one thing in common apart from beauty: humility. It's a shame that those with less to boast about do it the most.

People that have been consistently hurt by others in life will only see the one time you hurt them and be blinded to all the good your heart has to offer. They look no further than what they want to see. Unfortunately, most of them remain a victim throughout their life.

Patience is the antidote to the restless poison of the Ego. Without it we all become ego-maniacal bulls in china shops, destroying our future happiness as we blindly rush in where angels fear to tread. In these out-of-control moments, we bulldoze through the best possible outcomes for our lives, only to return to the scene of the crime later to cry over spilt milk.

sometimes when everything seems at
its worst
when all conspires
and gnaws
and the hours, days, weeks
years
seem wasted –
stretched there upon my bed
in the dark
looking upward at the ceiling
i get what many will consider an
obnoxious thought:
it’s still nice to be
Bukowski.

Great people have great egos; maybe that's what makes them great.

Question: You seem to advise me to be self-centered to the point of
egoism. Must I not yield even to my interest in other people?
Maharaj: Your interest in others is egoistic, self-concerned, self-
oriented. You are not interested in others as persons, but only
as far as they enrich, or enoble your own image of yourself.
And the ultimate in selfishness is to care only for the protection,
preservation and multiplication of one's own body. By body I
mean all that is related to your name and shape--- your family,
tribe, country, race, etc. To be attached to one's name and
shape is selfishness. A man who knows that he is neither body
nor mind cannot be selfish, for he has nothing to be selfish for.
Or, you may say, he is equally 'selfish' on behalf of everybody
he meets; everybody's welfare is his own. The feeling 'I am the
world, the world is myself' becomes quite natural; once it is es-
tablished, there is just no way of being selfish. To be selfish
means to covet, to acquire, accumulate on behalf of the part
against the whole.
I Am That
Nisargadatta Maharaj

Dark circles under my eyes sink deeper and deeper into my skull, in contrast to my pale skin there is an undeniable resemblance to a fresh corpse.