Elie Wiesel Quotes

The violence done us by others is often less painful than that which we do to ourselves.

But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.

I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. ... Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.

There is no power on earth that can loosen a man's grip on his own throat

The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide, not murder.

I’ve blamed her for all of this, for leaving, for ruining me. And maybe that was the seed of it, but from that one little seed grew this tumor of a flowering plant. And I’m the one who nurtures it. I water it. I care for it.I nibble from its poison berries. I let it wrap around my neck, choking the air right out of me. I’ve done that. All by myself. All to myself.

The evil done by oneself, self-begotten, self-bred, crushes the foolish, as a diamond breaks a precious stone.

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.

The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.

No man is hurt but by himself.

I voluntarily inflicted a certain level of insanity on myself.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

I think we all carry the seeds of our own destruction. You really have to be aware that just because something is good, it doesn't mean it's not going to trigger a self-destructive impulse.

I found a very diabolical way of making myself suffer - not in the same way [my mother ] was suffering but to prevent me from enjoying my own life.

Is there anything men take more pains about than to render themselves unhappy?

Man has to suffer. When he has no real afflictions, he invents some.

The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.

Yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.

A man can't be taken to hell, or sent to hell: you can only get there on your own steam.

Man is his own worst enemy.

Our greatest misfortunes come to us from ourselves.

I am the perpetrator of my suffering - but only all of it.

He was assaulting the world by assaulting himself.