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Self-Acceptance

  • To live with the terrible truths about ourselves is the only way of not living them out. A need denied has infinitely more power than a need accepted.

  • Self-affirmation cannot be found in love; it is a prior condition of genuine love.

  • Might I be the one I am looking for?

    • Natalie Clifford Barney,
    • "Scatterings" (1910), in Anna Livia, ed., A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney ()
  • Love of others is the appreciation of one's self.

    • Mina Loy,
    • "Aphorisms on Futurism" (1914), in Roger L. Conover, ed., The Lost Lunar Baedecker ()
  • Don't you love nobody better'n you do yo'self. Do, you'll be dying befo' yo' time is out.

  • In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.

  • We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.

  • Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

  • Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself.

  • For the possibilities of being different from what one is are infinite. Once one has negated oneself, however, there are no longer any particular choices.

  • I am not just a lesbian. I am not just a poet. I am not just a mother. Honor the complexity of your vision and yourselves.

  • ... it's perfectly possible to hate one's fat and to love one's body at the same time.

  • I love what I cannot be / as well as what I am.

  • We do not accept ourselves for what we are, we retreat from our real selves, and then we erect a personality to bridge the gap.

  • Your thorns are the best part of you.

  • All that matters / is to be in step / with one's self.

  • One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave — our own self. Get on good terms with that companion — learn to live with yourself.

  • Self-affection is the real dwelling to which we must always return with a view to a faithfulness to ourselves and an ability to welcome the other as different.

  • There are three things I commit to on a daily basis: Exercising for an hour a day, tops. Never skipping meals. And accepting the size and shape I was born with.

    • Paula Abdul,
    • in Tina Schwager and Michele Schuerger, The Right Moves: A Girl's Guide to Getting Fit and Feeling Good ()
  • ... my trouble / is that I have the spirit of Gertrude Stein / but the personality of Alice B. Toklas ...

  • Learning to live with what you're born with / is the process, / the involvement, / the making of a life.

    • Diane Wakoski,
    • "I Have Had to Learn to Live With My Face," The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems ()
  • And I have not learned happily / to live with my face.

    • Diane Wakoski,
    • "I Have Had to Learn to Live With My Face," The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems ()
  • It is curious how believable I can be when I criticize myself, how unconvincing when I give myself praise.

  • Until we can tolerate our own company, we cannot expect other people to be overjoyed by our presence.

  • What a desire! ... to live in peace with that word: Myself.

  • ... when I'm trusting and being myself as fully as possible, everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously.

  • Self-acceptance begets acceptance from others, which begets even deeper, more genuine self-acceptance. It can be done. But no one is going to bestow it on you. It is a gift only you can give yourself.

  • During much of my life, I was anxious to be what someone else wanted me to be. Now I have given up that struggle. I am what I am.

  • I am what I am.

    • Rosario Morales,
    • poem title, in Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds., This Bridge Called My Back ()
  • Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have.

  • ... the best-adjusted people are the 'psychologically patriotic,' who are glad to be what they are.

  • There's a point, around age twenty . . . when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.

  • Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be.

  • Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.

    • Flannery O'Connor,
    • in Sally Fitzgerald, ed., The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor ()