Lloyd Alexander Quotes

I think we overrate ourselves in terms of our abilities and capacities. I mean, just because you can build a really swell bridge doesn't, to my way of thinking, mean that you're an advanced civilization.

While we are indifferent to our good qualities, we keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we come to look on them as virtues.

I know who I am and what I do.

I don't know if I'm more confident than ever before, because I definitely had confidence when I was starting out. Maybe I have less confidence now that I did then.

I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.

One that does not think to highly of himself is more than he thinks.

we are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason. but we cannot just walk into the cavern and look around. most of what we think we know about our minds is pseudo-knowledge. we are all such shocking poseurs, so good at inflating the importance of what we think we value.

If you think everything you've done is great, you're probably dumb.

I definitely have a tendency to only see the blemishes of things, and see lots of things about my acting that I don't like. I think I've gotten a little easier on myself, or at least a little more usefully critical of myself. I think before, I just couldn't take looking at myself at all.

What mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit.

If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

If you would improve, submit to be considered wihout sense and foolish with respect to externals. Wish to be considered to know nothing; and if you shall seem to someone to be a person of importance, distrust yourself.

Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good that if you don’t know, know that you don’t know — the belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind, where, without knowing, you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally, the more you are afraid of the doubt within you.

I think looking at your own life, on- and offscreen, you can motivate anything, or you can delude yourself into anything.

The ablest man I ever met is the man you think you are.

Most fools think they are only ignorant.

Seeing, feeling, thinking, believing - these are the stages of how we change our style on the outside and our self-image on the inside.

We all act like we know everything in life, but nobody really does. That's what I want people to realize. For me, I know that I'm the same person. Nothing has changed. My family and friends know that.

Am I sounding better or am I just getting used to my voice?

I always told, Sandra Bullock was my student when she was younger, I always told her it's important that we hold on to our insecurity, the wisdom of insecurity.

The timid man calls himself cautious, the sordid man thrifty.

I believe that misconceptions about oneself that one does not correct where possible act as a bad magic.

I can't say I've ever finished a film and been particularly thrilled with myself or patted myself on the back. And maybe that's what keeps me going, and that's a good thing. It speaks volumes about how I perceive myself.

I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

I'm willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong.