When we come to judge others it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world.
We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.
Lots of us when we're children believe 'oh well, if the world knew us as we really are, they'd know what wonderful, clever, brilliant, charming people we really are.'
Through the eclipse of large areas of the self, by repression and inhibition as well as by idealization and externalization, the individual loses sight of himself; he feels, if he does not actually become, like a shadow without weight and substance.
I feel like the better version of myself is on paper... I'd rather have people know me on paper.
Every time you reject yourself, you idealize others
You write who you are. But you also cheat, and youwrite what you want to be. It's embarrasing to be the guy who madethe movie, knowing you're not exactly who you want to be.
Fortitude, determination... in a way they're things that I idealize myself and am curious about.
I was a perfect mother.
Men like to think well of themselves, and poets help them do it.
Letters are false really - they are expressions of the way you wish you were instead of the way you are.
I am pretty sure that all young human beings have, at one time or another in their growing-up, been actors. They have used their imaginations to carry them away from painful or confusing situations... have imagined themselves to be more powerful or beautiful or brave or loving than they are.
In my stories, whenever there's somebody wonderful and charming and bright and intelligent, that's me!
We even make ourselves up, fusing what we are with what we wish into what we must become. I'm not sure why it must be so, but it is.
I guess I would ideally want to be 20 physically, but 40 mentally.
Each community has a curious and distorted image of itself which is always flattering.
I became to myself an imaginary figure of great excellence, daring and glamor.
All great men are play actors of their own ideal.
A large portion of human beings live not so much in themselves as in what they desire to be. They create what is called an ideal character, in an ideal form, whose perfections compensate in some degree for the imperfections of their own.
Nothing is forgotten in the processes of idealization. Reveries of idealization develop, not by letting oneself be taken in by memories, but by constantly dreaming the values of a being whom one would love. And that is the way a great dreamer dreams his double. His magnified double sustains him.
A person likes to think of himself in a certain way, and when something happens that makes that no longer possible, you mourn the old self. The person you thought you were.
