I pity you and vex myself. [ Ennius ]

Myself and the lucky moment. [ Charles V ]

Not if I know myself at all. [ Charles Lamb ]

But to say nothing of myself. [ Ovid ]

I wrap myself up in my virtue. [ Horace ]

To myself alone do I owe my fame. [ Corneille ]

Oh, may I with myself agree,
And never covet what I see.
Content me with an humble shade,
My passions tamed, my wishes laid;
For, while our wishes wildly roll.
We banish quiet from the soul.
It is thus the busy beat the air,
And misers gather wealth and care. [ Dyer ]

If I lose mine honor, I lose myself. [ William Shakespeare ]

I'll never keep a dog and bark myself. [ Proverb ]

I will not keep a dog and bark myself. [ Proverb ]

O, I have lost my reputation!
I have lost the immortal part of myself
And what remains is bestial. [ Shakespeare ]

Nothing can work me damage except myself. [ St. Bernard ]

I love my friends well, but myself better. [ Proverb ]

I have never occupied myself with trifles. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

I am not mad; I would to heaven I were!
For then, 'tis like I should forget myself:
O, if I could, what grief should I forget! [ William Shakespeare ]

Whistling to keep myself from being afraid. [ Dryden ]

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. [ Lamb ]

These faces in the mirrors
Are but the shadows and phantoms of myself. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but for my single self,
I had as lief not be as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself. [ William Shakespeare ]

I was never less alone than when by myself. [ Edward Gibbon ]

I awoke one morning and found myself famous. [ Byron ]

That is always best which gives me to myself. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Poor worms, they hiss at me, whilst I at home
Can be contented to applaud myself, with joy,
To see how plump my bags are and my barns. [ Ben Jonson ]

O happiness of blindness! now no beauty
Inflames my lust; no other's goods my envy,
Or misery my pity; no man's wealth
Draws my respect; nor poverty my scorn,
Yet still I see enough! man to himself
Is a large prospect, raised above the level
Of his low creeping thoughts; if then I have
A world within myself, that world shall be
My empire; there I'll reign, commanding freely,
And willingly obeyed, secure from fear
Of foreign forces, or domestic treasons. [ Denham ]

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself? [ William Shakespeare ]

I live.
But live to die: and living, see no thing
To make death hateful, save an innate clinging,
A loathsome and yet all invincible
Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I
Despise myself, yet cannot overcome -
And so I live. [ Byron ]

If I have enough for myself and family,
I am steward only for myself; if I have more,
I am but a steward of that abundance for others. [ George Herbert ]

Myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide;
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven. [ Milton ]

Not myself, but the truth that in life I have spoken,
Not myself, but the seed that in life I have sown.
Shall pass on to ages; all about me forgotten.
Save the truth I have spoken, the things I have done. [ Horatius Bonar ]

But help me to money, and I'll help myself to friends. [ Proverb ]

Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself. [ Swift ]

I thought to bless myself, and I beat out both my eyes. [ Proverb ]

I would have a good horse for myself, not for my brother. [ Proverb ]

I never whisper'd a private affair
Within the hearing of cat or mouse,
No, not to myself in the closet alone,
But I heard it shouted at once from the top of the house;
Everything came to be known. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

I quote others only in order the better to express myself. [ Montaigne ]

I myself had been happy, if I had been unfortunate in time. [ Proverb ]

Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies. [ The French Ana ]

I am not only witty myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. [ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II Act I Sc. 2 ]

I am myself a gentleman of the press, and have no other escutcheon. [ Beaconsfield ]

I entrench myself in my books, equally against sorrow and the weather. [ Leigh Hunt ]

God defend me from the still water, and I'll keep myself from the rough. [ Proverb ]

Heaven protect me from my friends; I will protect myself against my enemies. [ Proverb ]

There is something noble in hearing myself ill spoken of when I am doing well. [ Alexander the Great ]

Not unfamiliar with misfortune myself, I have learned to succour the wretched. [ Virgil ]

No, no! I am but shadow of myself: You are deceived, my substance is not here. [ William Shakespeare ]

I should rejoice if my pleasures were as pleasing to God as they are to myself. [ Marguerite de Valois ]

Unhappy scenes which I myself witnessed, and in which I acted a principal part. [ Virgil ]

I pride myself in recognizing and upholding ability in every party and wherever I meet it. [ Beaconsfield ]

Being myself no stranger to suffering, I have learned to relieve the sufferings of others. [ Virgil ]

I have made as much of myself as could be made of the stuff and no man should require more. [ Jean Paul Richter ]

I pack my troubles in as little compass as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others. [ Southey ]

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend is my amiableness personified. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

I follow nature as the surest guide, and resign myself with implicit obedience to her sacred ordinances. [ Cicero ]

I do not myself believe there is any misfortune. What men call such is merely the shadow-side of a good. [ George MacDonald ]

Not because I raise myself above something but because I raise myself to something, do I approve myself. [ Jacobi ]

Thee, Fortune, I follow; hence far all treaties past; to fate I commit myself, and the arbitrament of war. [ Lucan on the crossing of the Rubicon by Caesar ]

I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was possible for me to execute myself. [ Montesquieu ]

These things I revolve by myself with compressed lips, When I have any leisure, I amuse myself with my writings. [ Horace ]

I too must attempt a way by which I may raise myself above the ground, and soar triumphant through the lips of men. [ Virgil ]

Were wisdom given me with this reservation, that I should keep it shut up within myself and not impart it, I would spurn it. [ Seneca ]

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me. [ Charles Lamb ]

If wisdom were conferred with this proviso, that I must keep it to myself and not communicate it to others, I would have none of it. [ Seneca ]

I think I am rather fond of silent people myself. I cannot bear to live with a person who feels compelled to talk because he is my companion. [ Disraeli ]

I must do something to keep my thoughts fresh and growing. I dread nothing so much as falling into a rut and feeling myself becoming a fossil. [ James A. Garfield ]

We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself. [ Colton ]

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself. [ Lamb ]

Taught by experience to know my own blindness, shall I speak as if I could not err, and as if others might not in some disputed points be more enlightened than myself? [ Channing ]

I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavored and taken pains to belie me. It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions. [ Ben Jonson ]

The very society of joy redoubles it; so that, whilst it lights upon my friend it rebounds upon myself, and the brighter his candle burns the more easily will it light mine. [ South ]

I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing in that from which within a few days I might dissent myself. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]

I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself? [ Yogi Berra ]

In looking around me seeking for miserable resources against the heaviness of time, I open a book, and I say to myself, as the cat to the fox: I have only one good turn, but I need no other. [ Madame Necker ]

I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me. I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. [ Lamb ]

I seek in the reading of my books only to please myself by an irreproachable diversion; or if I study it is for no other science than that which treats of the knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to die and live well. [ Montaigne ]

The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself. [ Colton ]

I have often reflected within myself on this unaccountable humor in womankind of being smitten with everything that is showy and superficial, and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition. [ Addison ]

Now, my young friends to whom I am addressing myself, with reference to this habit of reading, I make bold to tell you that it is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures. [ Anthony Trollope ]

Every man stamps his value on himself. The price we challenge for ourselves is given us. There does not live on earth the man, be his station what it may, that I despise myself compared with him. Man is made great or little by his own will. [ Schiller ]

There is nothing like fun, is there? I haven't any myself, but I do like it in others. O, we need it! We need all the counterweights we can muster to balance the sad relations of life. God has made many sunny spots in the heart; why should we exclude the light from them? [ Haliburton ]

Today I accidentally stepped on a snail on the sidewalk in front of our house. And I thought, I too am like that snail. I build a defensive wall around myself, a 'shell' if you will. But my shell isn't made out of a hard protective substance. Mine is made out of tinfoil and paper bags. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

I love the acquaintance of young people; because, in the first place, I do not like to think myself growing old. In the next place, young acquaintances must last longest, if they do last; and then, sir, young men have more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect. [ Dr. Johnson ]

That which I have found the best recreation both to my mind and body, whensoever either of them stands in need of it, is music, which exercises at once both body and soul; especially when I play myself; for then, methinks, the same motion that my hands make upon the instrument, the instrument makes upon my heart. [ J. Beveridge ]

I will not much commend others to themselves, I will not at all commend myself to others. So to praise any to their faces is a kind of flattery, but to praise myself to any is the height of folly. He that boasts his own praises speaks ill of himself, and much derogates from his true deserts. It is worthy of blame to affect commendation. [ Arthur Warwick ]

I never had the courage to talk across a long, narrow room I should be at the end of the room facing all the audience. If I attempt to talk across a room I find myself turning this way and that, and thus at alternate periods I have part of the audience behind me. You ought never to have any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what they are going to do. [ Mark Twain, from his speech Courage ]

When the great Kepler had at length discovered the harmonic laws that regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed: Whether my discoveries will be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is a matter that concerns them more than me. I may well be contented to wait one century for a reader, when God Himself, during so many thousand years, has waited for an observer like myself. [ Macaulay ]

The little I have seen of the world teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed through, the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish inquietude of hope and fear, the pressure of want, the desertion of friends. I would fain leave the erring soul of my fellowman with Him from whose hand it came. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Though no participator in the joys of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures, in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practice toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

I put myself, my experiences, my observations, my heart and soul into my work. I press my soul upon the white paper. The writer who does this may have any style, he or she will find the hearts of their readers. Writing a book involves, not a waste, but a great expenditure of vital force. Yet I can assure you I have written the last lines of most of my stories with tears. The characters of my own creation had become dear to me. I could not bear to bid them good-bye and send them away from me into the wide world. [ Amelia E. Barr, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke, I only know that it was in my father's lifetime, and that I was discreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a shade past eleven; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an example to others, and - not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake. It is a good rule. I mean, for me; but some of you know quite well that it wouldn't answer for everybody that's trying to get to be seventy. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

Once when I was in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai, I met a mysterious old stranger. He said he was about to die and wanted to tell someone about the treasure. I said, Okay, as long as it's not a long story. Some of us have a plane to catch, you know. He started telling his story, about the treasure and his life and all, and I thought: This story isn't too long. But then, he kept going, and I started thinking, Uh-oh, this story is getting long. But then the story was over, and I said to myself: You know, that story wasn't too long after all. I forget what the story was about, but there was a good movie on the plane. It was a little long, though. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

My method has been simply this - to think well on the subject which I had to deal with and when thoroughly impressed with it and acquainted with it in all its details, to write away without stopping to choose a word, leaving a blank where I was at a loss for it; to express myself as simply as possible in vernacular English, and afterwards to go through what I had written, striking out all redundancies, and substituting, when possible, simpler and more English words for those I might have written. I found that by following this method I could generally reduce very considerably in length what I had put on paper without sacrificing anything of importance or rendering myself less intelligible. [ Sir Austen Henry Layard, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

Mother! How many delightful associations cluster around that word! The innocent smiles of infancy, the gambols of boyhood, and the happiest hours of riper years! When my heart aches and my limbs are weary travelling the thorny path of life, I sit down on some mossy stone, and closing my eyes on real scenes, send my spirit back to the days of early life; I feel afresh my infant joys and sorrows, till my spirit recovers its tone, and is willing to pursue its journey. But in all these reminiscences my mother rises; if I seat myself upon my cushion, it is at her side; if I sing, it is to her ear; if I walk the walls or the meadows, my little hand is in my mother's, and my little feet keep company with hers; when my heart bounds with its best joy, it is because at the performance of some task, or the recitation of some verses, I receive a present from her hand. There is no velvet so soft as a mother's lap, no rose so lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps. [ Bishop Thomson ]

In the matter of diet - which is another main thing - I have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got the best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince-pie after midnight; up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening. Eleven hours. That is all right for me, and is wholesome, because I have never had a headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it. And I wish to urge upon you this - which I think is wisdom - that if you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. When they take off the Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station where there's a cemetery. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, I started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that - the world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the - I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her - ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was - I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]