Henri Nouwen Quotes

When you live for others' opinions, you are dead. I don't want to live thinking about how I'll be remembered.

I've given up trying to understand what people think about me.

You spend so much of your life basing yourself on what you think other people think of you. Then you realise that maybe one of the purposes of life is not to care.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

Other people's opinion of you does not have to become your reality.

I feel like regardless of whether or not I win this award or I win that award or I don't win this award - I'm still Sam at the end of the day. And that's what defines me.

It's so easy today to get swept up in celebrity fixation and materialism and searching for some validation outside of yourself when we know it's really found within and through meaningful connections with other people.

There is always going to be someone more successful, richer, better looking, or with a nicer car.

I'm not really concerned with the outer success.

I've changed. I'm not worried about what people think, because I think people think what they want to think anyway.

I realized that I really couldn't worry about what people think of me.

As you get older, it's always a process of self-love, learning how to really do that for yourself instead of trying to find it outside yourself.

If you don't have self love you can never find it outside of yourself.

..."And for God's sake, never get into the petty habit of measuring your self-worth against other people's net-worth. As Yogi Ramen preached: 'Every second you spend thinking about someone elses dreams you take time away from your own.'"

What Do You Care What Other People Think?

Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?

I have come to the conclusion that the modern interpretation of the Declaration of Independence is something like this: I am as good as those that think themselves better and a long sight better than those who only think themselves as good.

One day a long time from now you'll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say about you. That's when you'll finally produce the work you're capable of.

If I'm not comfortable in my own skin or confident in who I am, then I'm going to pick parts based on how people are going to view them, not based on what I find challenging or entertaining.

I find that I'm not as worried anymore about what other people think. That's a comfortable place to be. And I'm starting to let go of the feeling that I need to push myself to do things I don't want to do - an impulse that has always been linked to the feeling that I'm not enough.

When we think too much about the opinions of others, we are letting them edit a book God has written.

Work has enhanced and certainly supported my feelings toward myself, because it's been a reflection of goals I've set. But if you're not happy with yourself on the inside, then what does it matter?

If you are hoping to find your self-worth and fulfillment in other peoples' opinion of your writing, you will never find it.

No matter where you are in life, you'll save a lot of time by not worrying too much about what other people think about you. The earlier in your life that you can learn that, the easier the rest of it will be.