Self-Alteration Quotes

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.

Quite quickly I grew less deranged. I had begun the process of calming down, assimilating and compromising, which is necessary to live comfortably in the world as it is, and probably is why its imbalance never changes. But underneath, my idea of life was completely altered.

There used to be a real me, but I had it surgically removed.

A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution.

I've definitely had the experience where I was pursuing someone for a long time that I just obviously did not connect with, so I was always, kind of altering myself for her, But then you realize it's just not worth it. What's the point?

Since age twelve, I've felt like I'm someone else,'cause I hung my original self from the top bunk with a belt.

When we're done with it, we may find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before.

Every change in human attitude must come through internal understanding and acceptance. Man is the only known creature who can reshape and remould himself by altering his attitude.

Trying to change ourselves in order to please others - so that we can feel temporarily whole for having won their approval - is like cutting a flower into pieces so that it will fit into a vase.

We imagine that human nature doesn't change. We like to say that but I don't think it's true because we have, in the course of the centuries, altered ourselves.

Every action alters the soul of the doer.

Nature made your eyebrows like that for a reason. I don't know the reason. Some people say it's to do with keeping rain out of monkeys' eyes. Whatever. The point is, if you try to redesign your eyebrows with tweezers and pens, it will look terrible.

The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that's unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn't blame them, having done the same once myself.

I didn't go Hollywood on the outside with flashy cars, upstairs maids and mink-covered bathroom fixtures. I went Hollywood on the inside, and that's worst of all. I tried to avoid being natural. I lowered my voice. I copied the mannerisms of other stars. I struck poses.

After love, no one is what they were before.

I felt like I needed to be a 'pretty girl' for someone else. I felt like I needed to change a lot about who I actually was to be perfect for them instead of just being who I am genuinely.

There's a great desire for people to alter themselves, but it's also the art of transformation. 'I want a bigger butt; I want bigger boobs.' The artifice interests me - how we're capable of altering ourselves. There's a creative element that's very intriguing.

What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.

I grew up in a predominantly Caucasian community, and most of my friends had blonde hair and blue eyes. So I was always straightening my hair, wearing colored contacts, and I never tanned, if I could help it.

I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

To cultivate an English accent is already a departure away from what you are.

In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.

Anytime you make a person into something other than himself, you make a monster.