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"And remember: you must not overwork your body, or your soul. You must not enslave yourself, as you would not enslave any other person. You must be the custodian of your self."
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Exlpore more Self-Improvement quotes
"Once you have produced your best self, then you will be able to produce new seeds and fruits after your kind."
"Your everyday actions will define you and your virtue."
"Life reality tells us that to grow physically, you first need to grow inwardly."
"Be the master of your life."
"Locate things that motivate you and surround yourself with people that inspire you."
"When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them."
"We live in a world where people are so busy trying to find someone that's "good enough" for them, that they have failed to stop and ask themselves if they are in fact good enough for other people! This is the result of a feeling of false entitlement that has been instilled in the minds of people today. "Everyone" deserves "the best" from the "Universe" however, nobody is teaching anybody to stop and try to become the best for their own selves and for other people. When everybody thinks they are the best, everybody falls short of the best that they can actually be."
"The perceiving our own weaknesses enables us to give others excellent advice, but it does not teach us to to reform ourselves."
"It does seem - well, difficult - to be at the mercy of some gross, unshaven stranger before you can begin to be yourself."
"Now stand in the corner, and think about what you've done!"
Explore more quotes by Joyce Carol Oates
"I feel very transparent in myself. I'm more of an observer. I'm interested in what's going on. I'm not sure that I really have a personality. Some people think I do have a personality. I have a personality when I am with certain people - but when I'm not with them I don't have that personality. I just sort of go back to resembling a transparent glass of water."
"This was before voice mail, recorded phone messages you can't escape. Life was easier then. You just didn't pick up the phone."
"I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life."
"How strange it is, to be walking away. Is it possible that I am really going to leave Ray-here? Is it possible that he won't be coming home with me in another day or two, as we'd planned? Such a thought is too profound for me to grasp. It's like fitting a large unwieldy object in a small space. My brain hurts, trying to contain it."
"Only when men are connected to large universal goals are they really happy-and one result of their happiness is a rush of creative activity."
"This is my life now. Absurd, but unpredictable. Not absurd because unpredictable but unpredictable because absurd. If I have lost the meaning of my life, I might still find small treasured things among the spilled and pilfered trash."
"You never give such relationships a thought, To give a thought, to take a thought is a function of dissociation, distance. You can't exercise memory until you've removed yourself from memory's source."
"I should say, one of the things about being a widow or a widower, you really, really need a sense of humor, because everything's going to fall apart."
"As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exercise."
"It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim."
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