Self-Possession Quotes

He who is by nature not his own but another's man is by nature a slave.

Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them.

True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself, hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person.

Propaganda is not French, it is not civilized to want other people to believe what you believe because the essence of being civilized is to possess yourself as you are, and if you possess yourself as you are, you of course cannot possess any one else, it is not your business.

Alexander esteemed it more kingly to govern himself than to conquer his enemies.

There's no room for demons when you're self-possessed.

I want to feel what I feel. What's mine. Even if it's not happiness, whatever that means. Because you're all you've got.

Your most important asset is the conscious control of your own life.

Our own temperate blood, schooled to self-possession and the measured conduct of self-government, is receiving a constant infusion and yearly experiencing a partial corruption of foreign blood.

He that would govern others, first should be The master of himself.

The fortune my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.

Those who can command themselves command others.

But while I breathe Heaven's air and Heaven looks down on me, And smiles at my best meanings, I remain Mistress of mine own self and mine own soul.

Who do I belong to? How come I mortgaged my being till I don't belong to myself? How come I sold my blood? And who now owns my indecisions, my hands, my private pain, my pride?

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.

For if I am to love truly and freely, I must be able to give something that is truly my own to another. If my heart does not first belong to me, how can I give it to another?

I know what I do and what it means to me and where its sources lie, and that's mine. It still is mine.

I'm an in-control person.

I am in control at all times.

I don't think I have ever been out of control.

I'm good at my own company.

Grace in women has more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character, which reposes on its own sensations and derives pleasure from all around it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, "in their eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their face," which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a secret sympathy towards them.

I have to reign myself in a lot.

Nobody can say anything to take what's for me away from me. And I live by that.

Take what you can yourself, and don't let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life.