The Life Warnings

SELF-ESTEEM

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I’d like to share 53 of the most inspiring, thought provoking and uplifting thoughts from the past 2400 years on getting to know yourself, raising your self-esteem and finding a self-love.

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1. “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection”
    – Buddha

2. “Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. ”
   – M. Scott Peck

3. “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”
   – Mark Twain

4. “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself.”
   – Harvey Fierstein

5. “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
   – Lucille Ball

6. “Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.”
   – Eleanor Roosevelt

7. “If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”
   – Fred Rogers

8. “Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.”
   – Maxwell Maltz

9. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
   – Ralph Waldo Emerson

10. “When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life.”
    – Jean Shinoda Bolen

11. “Self-care is never a selfish act—it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.”
    – Parker Palmer

12. “When you adopt the viewpoint that there is nothing that exists that is not part of you, that there is no one who exists who is not part of you, that any judgment you make is self-judgment, that any criticism you level is self-criticism, you will wisely extend to yourself an unconditional love that will be the light of the world.”
    – Harry Palmer

13. “Why should we worry about what others think of us, do we have more confidence in their opinions than we do our own?”
    – Brigham Young

14. “To establish true self-esteem we must concentrate on our successes and forget about the failures and the negatives in our lives.”
    – Denis Waitley

15. “A healthy self-love means we have no compulsion to justify to ourselves or others why we take vacations, why we sleep late, why we buy new shoes, why we spoil ourselves from time to time. We feel comfortable doing things which add quality and beauty to life.”
    – Andrew Matthews

16. “Our self-respect tracks our choices. Every time we act in harmony with our authentic self and our heart, we earn our respect. It is that simple. Every choice matters.”
    – Dan Coppersmith

17. “People may flatter themselves just as much by thinking that their faults are always present to other people’s minds, as if they believe that the world is always contemplating their individual charms and virtues.”
    – Elizabeth Gaskell

18. “Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness and self-worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can’t love and respect yourself – no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are – completely; the good and the bad – and make changes as YOU see fit – not because you think someone else wants you to be different.”
    – Stacey Charter

19. “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
    – Howard Washington Thurman

20. “Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.”
    – Malcolm S. Forbes

21. “Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”
    – Ralph Waldo Emerson

22. “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.”
    – Helen Keller

23. “You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”
    – Louise L. Hay

24. “To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance”
    – Oscar Wilde

25. “Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.”
    – André Gide

26. “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
    – William James

27. “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
    – Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

28. “You’re always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.”
    – Diane Von Furstenberg

29. “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
    – Carl Gustav Jung

30. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
    – Eleanor Roosevelt

31. “The better you feel about yourself, the less you feel the need to show off.”
    – Robert Hand

32. “I think everybody’s weird. We should all celebrate our individuality and not be embarrassed or ashamed of it.”
    – Johnny Depp

33. “You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are.”
    – Yogi Bhajan

34. “It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.”
    – W.C. Fields

35. “There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself.”
    – Brian Andreas

36. “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”
    – Benjamin Spock

37. “Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”
    – Lao-Tzu

38. “People who want the most approval get the least and the people who need approval the least get the most.”
    – Wayne Dyer

39. “There is nothing noble about being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.”
    – Hindu Proverb

40. “I found in my research that the biggest reason people aren’t more self-compassionate is that they are afraid they’ll become self-indulgent. They believe self-criticism is what keeps them in line. Most people have gotten it wrong because our culture says being hard on yourself is the way to be.”
    – Kristen Neff

41. “Your problem is you’re… too busy holding onto your unworthiness.”
    – Ram Dass

42. “The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.”
    – Rita Mae Brown

43. “She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself.”
    – Anais Nin

44. “People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.”
    – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

45. “If you aren’t good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you’ll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren’t even giving to yourself.”
    – Barbara De Angelis

46. “Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.”
    – Ralph Waldo Emerson

47. “It’s surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you’re not comfortable within yourself, you can’t be comfortable with others.”
    – Sidney J. Harris

48. “There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
    – Anaïs Nin

49. “It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else’s eyes.”
    – Sally Field

50. “When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn’t healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits – anything that kept me small.  My judgement called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving.”
    – Kim McMillen

51. “The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours – it is an amazing journey – and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.”
    – Bob Moawad

52. “Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world making the most of one’s best.”
    – Harry Emerson Fosdick

53. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
    – George Eliot

54. "Good people are like candles;they burn themselves up to give others light"                                                                 – Turkish Proverb.

55.  "Opinions don't define your reality"                                                           –Mary Godwin    

56. Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.                                                          – Albert Einstein

57. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.             – Charles R. Swindoll

58.