Linda Colley Quotes

I don't think I'm really a rude person, but now I see myself on television, I think, 'Oh, God, that is a bit strong.' And I wonder if I've always been like that and I haven't been aware of it.

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.

I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous - everyone hasn't met me yet.

I think there's an awful lot of me in Big Bird, but Oscar is pretty much - I think I know how he thinks because he thinks exactly the opposite of what I think is a good way to be.

I think that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.

I know that I'm inadequate, but I never thought that at seventeen. I thought I was doing the best I could. I thought I was being idealistic.

By nature, I am not an optimist, though I try to act as if I am.

I'm an optimist about other people. I'm not an optimist about myself.

It's not fun to see myself in the mirror.

We must not indulge in unfavorable views of mankind, since by doing it we make bad men believe they are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are good in vain.

I couldn't find it within me to focus on the positives. I just keep focusing on the negatives.

Every human being has an assortment of diverse identities, and it greatly matters which one is triggered by social situations, which hold up different kinds of mirrors. The same is true for nations.

The Northwest, to make a generalization, is a fairly sensitive populace. Slightly self-conscious and very self-reflexive.

I always focus on the negatives.

I always call myself either an optimistic pessimist or a pessimistic optimist - I'm not sure which way it goes.

I introspect on how I am perceived by other people. It's been this way since my childhood.

Men are always optimists when they look inwards, and pessimists when they look round them.

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

Hearing myself so much all the time, I don't think I sound that special all the time because it's me.

Fearfulness, contrary to all other vices, maketh a man think the better of another, the worse of himself.

I think most of us become self-critical as soon as we become self-conscious.

Because there is no man who can be true and just judge of himself, so much will self-love deceive him.

It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.

I don't pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself...and I'm too vain to play anything I think is bad.