Ernst Mach Quotes

I feel different than I did three years ago, in The Cider House Rules.

I see myself as most people see themselves, you have good days and bad days. I don't think I'm better looking now than I did three years ago.

It so often happens that others are measuring us by our past self while we are looking back on that self with a mixture of disgust and sorrow.

I was looking in the mirror the other day and I realized I haven't changed much since I was in my twenties. The only difference is I look a whole lot older now.

Ultimately, we measure ourselves against our own ideas of idealism and perfection, and we don't always come very close to them.

If my former self and my current self met for coffee, they'd get along OK, but they'd both probably walk out of the Starbucks shaking their heads and saying to themselves, “That guy is kinda delusional.”

I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of Faults than I had imagined, but I had the Satisfaction of seeing them diminish.

I've got an age that I do think of myself.

It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us. This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good heart whatever they might have to say.

A man has need of tough ears to hear himself fairly judged.

Over the years, you grow up, you mature and you see things in a different way, and it's reflected in the writing.

Am I too fast, too facile? I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am.

"I know quite enough of myself," said Bella, with a charming air of being inclined to give herself up as a bad job, "and I don't improve upon acquaintance..."

How easy it is to think well of ourselves. Until the moment is upon us, we can never be certain.

I'm very honored and thankful if someone says something nice about my playing, but in general I'm very critical of what I do.

It's always tricky to watch yourself, always. When I first had to watch myself, it was really hard because I'd done quite a few plays and I've never seen myself. So I was professional but I'd never watched myself. So I was like hearing you know... I'm sure you guys are all much more familiar with that because everybody has a phone, and everyone's taking pictures of themselves and making movies of themselves. And so people are more accustomed to it now. So I had to get used to it because there's a lot to be learned, of course, as an actor. When you watch yourself, you learn a lot.

You need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and not come away thinking, "Hey, there's something wrong with this mirror."

The many speak highly of you, but have you really any grounds for satisfaction with yourself if you are the kind of person the many understand?

This manner of writing wherein knowing myself inferior to myself? I have the use, as I may account it, but of my left hand.

I was in my early thirties writing about my early twenties, so there was this way of seeing my younger self from enough of a distance to have perspective but also not to feel that I had to protect myself. My dreams for myself then would have undersold myself in a way.

If I were somebody else looking at my character, I'd be like, "She's beautiful." I'm practicing. I'm not succeeding.

It is a whole lot easier to see our problems in others than it is to see them in ourselves.

One's belief that one is sincere is not so dangerous as one's conviction that one is right. We all feel we are right; but we felt the same way twenty years ago and today we know we weren't always right.

The more I reflect and look back on the past, the more vividly do I feel my limitations.

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.