Laura Riding Quotes

I spent an awful lot of my life underestimating myself and, as a result, not exceeding my own expectations.

Putting myself into categories is fun, and I think it also gives me insight into my own nature. When I see myself more clearly, I can more easily see ways that I might do things differently, to make myself happier. Categories can be unhelpful, however, when they become too all-defining, or when they become an excuse.

What we earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are.

I believe it is our own misperceptions of who we really are that leads to every self-created hell you'll find in this world.

We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.

Man is only miserable so far as he thinks himself so.

We choose what attitudes we have right now. And it's a continuing choice.

Every time you think a negative thought, it's one step in the wrong direction, for me.

We lost because we told ourselves we lost.

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

The delusions of self-love cannot be prevented, but intellectual misconceptions as to the means of achieving success may be corrected.

It is easier to act yourself into a new way of feeling than to feel yourself into a new way of acting.

A positive attitude is something everyone can work on, and everyone can learn how to employ it.

Be as you wish to seem.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

People aren't interested in seeing themselves as they really are.

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances.

Your joy comes from how you think, the choices that we make in life.

Your character is always right. No real person thinks they're being stupid or misguided or bigoted or evil or just plain wrong - so your characters can't, either.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It's a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we're telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

I think I'm pretty self-aware.

The mind is a funny thing in how it works. Sometimes you have to tell yourself what's really true. If you don't, your mind starts trying to tell you lies.

My self encompasses a lot of different things.

One thing that I think most people don't notice is that if you're sitting around telling yourself, 'I want to be happier,' there's a kind of subconscious message that you're also telling yourself at the same time, which is, 'What I have is not enough.'