Self Deprecation Quotes

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”
― Epictetus

“when you walk, you look like you’re trying to disappear.
your back is gonna be fucked up.
why do you think change is so hard? is it because you’re afraid?
people might think you’re pretty, but they’ll never love you.
you talk like you’re apologizing for your own voice.
speak up.
grow up.
find your spine, stop shrinking.
there is nothing brave about keeping silent.
how many times have you been in love? I can’t picture it ever happening for you.
you lie because it makes you feel free. this is a prison.
you’re always gonna think about him. you will never get him out of your system.
I wish I never had to see you again.
you poor thing.
go to hell.
you may be a nice person but you will never be a good person.
no one is ever going to want to touch you.
is there a vision in your head of who you want to be?
you do not have the strength to become her.
there is no boat big enough to keep you from drowning in the sea of yourself.
go to bed, baby.
you are tired from all of this nothing.
sleep.
rest.”
― Caitlyn Siehl

“There's no room for demons when you're self-possessed.”
― Carrie Fisher

“All the shitty stuff people do to themselves... it can all be the same thing, you know? Just a way to drown out your own voice. To kill your memories without having to kill yourself.”
― Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies

“They all laughed when I said I'd become a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now.”
― Bob Monkhouse, Crying With Laughter : My Life Story

“After years of self deprecating behavior, I’ve never learned how to properly take a compliment. A part of me wants to argue with him, to tell him there’s nothing special about me.”
― Brynna Gabrielson, Starkissed

“But it doesn't make sense for you to love me...”
― Stephenie Meyer, New Moon

“Don't be afraid! We won't make an author of you, while there's an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

“The average person’s self-esteem is so low that they are way less frequently surprised that they love someone than they are surprised that someone loves them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.

The killer whale's heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.

There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.”
― Wislawa Szymborska

“One notorious apikoros named Hiwa al-Balkhi, writing in ninth-century Persia, offered two hundred awkward questions to the faithful. He drew upon himself the usual thunderous curses—'may his name be forgotten, may his bones be worn to nothing'—along with detailed refutations and denunciations by Abraham ibn Ezra and others. These exciting anathemas, of course, ensured that his worrying 'questions' would remain current for as long as the Orthodox commentaries would be read. In this way, rather as when Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' Jewishness contrives irony at its own expense. If there is one characteristic of Jews that I admire, it is that irony is seldom if ever wasted on them.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“...sorry is a tool one uses to pander until the word itself becomes currency. It no longer merely apologizes, but insists, reminds: I'm here, right here, beneath you. It is the lowering of oneself so that the client feels right, superior, and charitable... one's definition of sorry is deranged into a new word entirely, one that's charged and reused as both power and defacement at once. Being sorry pays, being sorry even, or especially, when one has no fault, is worth every self-deprecating syllable the mouth allows. Because the mouth must eat.”
― Ocean Vuong

“Every time I move I squash something said Loathesome.”
― Norman Mailer, Deaths For The Ladies

“Never hide from adverse criticism. Mockery, indifference, misunderstanding— welcome the lot. Criticism of your work is much the same as criticism of yourself, you know, your work being an extension of yourself, and there's nothing like good slashing personal criticism for begetting humility.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, Pilgrim's Inn

“I have great faith in fools--self-confidence my friends will call it.' -- EDGAR ALLAN POE”
― Mark Dawidziak, A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe

“Archie Henderson has won no awards, written no books and never played any representative sport. He was an under-11 tournament-winning tennis player as a boy, but left the game when he discovered rugby where he was one of the worst flyhalves he can remember. This did not prevent him from having opinions on most things in sport.

His moment of glory came in 1970 when he predicted—correctly as it turned out—that Griquas would beat the Blue Bulls (then still the meekly named Noord-Transvaal) in the Currie Cup final. It is something for which he has never been forgiven by the powers-that-be at Loftus. Archie has played cricket in South Africa and India and gave the bowling term military medium a new and more pacifist interpretation. His greatest ambition was to score a century on Llandudno beach before the tide came in.”
― Archie Henderson

“A poet […] may talk nonsense, but it will probably be interesting nonsense.”
― W.H. Auden

“Consistency and persistence has the power to change failure into an extra ordinary success.”
― Bhawna Dehariya

“For her, the phrase the same as ever had two meanings. The first was an expression of relief and satisfaction that events hadn't taken a turn for the worse. The second was as a sign of self-deprecation, a means of mocking herself for remaining ever predictable, for never venturing forth from the fixed, rigid outlines of the life she had built.”
― Atsuhiro Yoshida, Goodnight Tokyo

“Besides casual onlookers there were also permanent watchers. This was merely a formality: the artist would never swallow the smallest morsel of food.

No one could possible watch the hunger artist continuously, therefore he was bound to be the sole spectator completely satisfied with his own fast.

Such suspicions, anyhow, were a necessary accompaniment to the profession of fasting.

Yet for other reasons he was never content.

For he alone knew how easy it was to fast.

Experience had proven that the interest of the public could be sustained for about forty days.

But after that their enthusiasm began to wane.

So on that day
the cage was opened.
Two doctors entered to
measure the results of the fast,

and two young ladies were selected for the honor of helping the hunger artist in a small table,

on which was spread a carefully chosen meal.

And at this moment the artist always turned stubborn. Why should he be cheated of the fame he would get for fasting longer, breaking his own record as the greatest hunger artist of all time?

- A Hunger Artist”
― Peter Kuper, Kafkaesque: Fourteen Stories

“One day, the ringmaster's eye fell upon the cage and he asked: "Why?"
this perfectly good spot should be left standing there unused.

Nobody knew, until one man remembered about the hunger artist.

"Are you still fasting?"
"Forgive me, everybody.

"I've always wanted you to admire my fasting.
"But you shouldn't admire it.
Because I have to fast. I can't help it."

"And why can't you help it?"

"Because I couldn't find the food I liked. If I had, I should have stuffed myself life you or anyone else."

Those were his last words, but in his dimming eyes remained the firm conviction that he was still continuing to fast.

And they buried the hunger artist, straw and all.

- A Hunger Artist”
― Peter Kuper, Kafkaesque: Fourteen Stories

“I have some little reputation, but my men made it all for me. -- JAMES LONGSTREET, Article in -Sumter Republican-, October 29, 1864.”
― Elizabeth Varon, Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South

“We've failed in our ultimate sacrament. Our shame is for ourselves. Our disgust is for each other.
The survivors who still wear church costume do it to brag about their pain. Sackcloth and ashes.
They couldn't save themselves. They were weak. The rules are all gone, and it doesn't matter.
We're all going overnight express delivery straight to Hell".”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“And it costed me everything. What could you give after everything?”
― Kailey Bright, Unity

“It’s not you. It’s the mirror that other people made for you.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The patient does not make light of manifestations of herself anymore, does not so often laugh or jeer at them, even if she still unconsciously passes them over or ignores them, even in the subtle way her parents dealt with the child before she had words to express her needs.”
― Alice Miller, Drama of Being a Child Book Club

“To write is to lose myself, yes, but everyone loses himself, because everything gets lost. I, however, lose myself without any joy - not like the river flowing into the sea for which it was secretly born, but like the puddle left on the beach by the high tide, its stranded water never returning to the ocean but merely sinking into the sand.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“The Kobayashi Maru is a test given to space commanders. They’re not supposed to pass it. It’s to teach them how to face failure.”
“Oh. Tom should be good at that.”
“Thanks… I think. Anyway, I was lucky I realized it in time. I almost succeeded.”
― Daniel Thorman, The Zodiac Quest: A LitRPG Adventure

“The shitty part? No one had ever actually said shit to me about anything like that. No one had bullied me. No one had called me a dork, or made fun of how obsessed I was with art.
The mean person?
The bully?
It was me.”
― Fae Quin, Possess Me! - I Want You To