Eugene H. Peterson Quotes

You must learn to perceive as your self that which lies outside you. Looking only within oneself leads to a hardening in oneself, to a higher egotism.

We humans are self-absorbed by nature, and spend most of our time focusing inwardly on our emotions, on our wounds, on our fantasies.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

I spent a lot of time in my head, but not like caring about what everybody else thought, just literally in my own world.

You can't get too caught up in yourself.

Irritability is immaturity of character. If you are subject to being cross and unpleasant with others for no apparent reason, you need to come face-to-face with the fact that you are thinking too much of yourself. After all, your feelings are not the most important thing in this world.

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty.

If someone uses the amount of time I spend in the public eye as criteria for what my music could possibly mean to them, they probably should take a long, hard look in the mirror and figure out why they need to think they're so special. Because I don't think anybody is that special.

No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.

In my own pursuit of God, I often became preoccupied with ME! It was easy to think that being constantly aware of my faults and weakness was humility. It’s not! If I’m the main subject, talking incessantly about my weaknesses, I have entered into the most subtle form of pride.

There is...a tendency to think of the spiritual life as primarily introspective, divorced from the concerns of everyday life....Faith that does not translate into actions is no faith at all.

So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sin, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others.

Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.

i was perhaps an egotist in youth, but i soon found it made me morbid to think too much about myself

Just each of us being me, me, me first. The murderer, the victim, the witness each of us thinks our role is the lead. Probably that goes for anybody in the world.

Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging.

This is a speculating and selfish age; and to think 'money will answer all things,' is too much the characteristic of Americans.

The diabolical thing about melancholy is not that it makes you ill but that it makes you conceited and shortsighted; yes almost arrogant. You lapse into bad taste, thinking of yourself as Heine's Atlas, whose shoulders support all the world's puzzles and agonies, as if thousands, lost in the same maze, did not endure the same agonies.

In the spiritual domain, criticism is love turned sour. In a wholesome spiritual life there is no room for criticism. The critical faculty is an intellectual one, not a moral one. If criticism becomes a habit it will destroy the moral energy of the life and paralyse spiritual force. The only person who can criticise human beings is the Holy Spirit.

Self-absorption intensifies isolation, but permits it to go unnoticed.

Egocentric: A person who has his I's too close together.

Most men are so thoroughly subjective that nothing really interests them but themselves.

By and large, I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves.

Surely, to think your own the only wisdom, and yours the only word, the only will, betrays a shallow spirit, an empty heart.

You are still young, so you think only of your own self. You do not notice the tribulations that occur all around you, to other people. Do not protest; it is true. I am not condemning you. I was as selfish as you, when I was your age. It is the custom of the young to be selfish... But someday you will understand that nobody passes through this world without suffering-no matter what you think of them and their supposed good fortune.