Alphonse Karr Quotes

Every Body has so good an Opinion of their own Understanding as to think their own way the best.

What probably distorts everything in life is that one is convinced that one is speaking the truth because one says what one thinks.

Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken!

We find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as our own, but they probably are.

All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes.

If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could never harm us.

We are so bemused by our own petard, that we are unable to look at things objectively.

People are drastically overconfident about their judgments of others.

The Fondness we have for Self, and the Relation which other Persons and Things have to ourselves, furnish us with another long Rank of Prejudices.

I do know that we have delusions about ourselves in what we sound like.

It is as easy to deceive one's self without perceiving it, as it is difficult to deceive others without their finding out.

Distrust your judgment the moment you can discern the shadow of a personal motive in it.

I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes.

Personal pride is probably a bad guide to merit.

The biggest lie is the lie we tell ourselves in the distorted visions we have of ourselves, blocking out some sections, enhancing others. What remains are not the cold facts of life, but how we perceive them. That's really who we are.

Every one at the bottom of his heart cherishes vanity; even the toad thinks himself good-looking,--"rather tawny perhaps, but look at his eye!

Things we wish to be true are apt to gain too ready credit with us.

We falsely interpret the world around us. We ignore evidence that doesn't support our prior beliefs and we convince ourselves we know things we don. We think we know things we don't know.

We see what we want to believe.

Our vanity would have just that which we do best count as that which is hardest for us. The origin of many a morality.

Since we think about ourselves so much of the time, it is comforting to assume ... that we really know the score.... [But] this is not an easy assignment. [As] Santayana wrote, 'Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one's equation written out.'

We always try to interpret things in accordance with what we want and not as they are.