Self Importance Quotes

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“How're we getting to King's Cross tomorrow, Dad?" asked Fred as they dug into a sumptuous pudding.
"The Ministry's providing a couple of cars," said Mr. Weasley.
Everyone looked up at him.
"Why?" said Percy curiously.
"It's because of you, Perce," said George seriously. "And there'll be little flags on the hoods, with HB on them-"
"-for Humongous Bighead," said Fred.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.”
― John Ruskin

“I think I’m better than everyone else. An opinion that has been backed up with ample evidence.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels

“The day we decide to drop the flimsy makeshift scenarios in our cluttered mind and eschew the ‘alleluias’ of self-importance, life can become genuine, lucid and graceful, like a flow of wellness in the glow of a new morning. ("Words flew away like birds")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“We need not be afraid of learning to know ourselves, fearing it would come down to disappointment. Remaining humble allows us to have compassion for ourselves for not being perfect. If we stay lucid and grounded, we steer clear of the steep cliffs of delusional self-importance or arrogance.( "I am on my own side, but I can listen" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome.

The better and more realistic test would therefore seem to be: In what cause, or on what principle, would you risk your life?”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Some people, who always talk about how busy they are, are really trying to claim how 'important' they are.”
― Donna Lynn Hope

“No matter the self-conceited importance of our labors we are all compost for worlds we cannot yet imagine.”
― David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

“Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.”
― John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River

“The most important single thing we had to pound into ourselves is that we were not important, we musn't be pedants; we were not to feel superior to anyone else in the world. We're nothing more than dust jackets for books, of no significance otherwise.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I find it sad that too many do not understand themselves, or their potential. They don't even take the time to get to know their unconsciousness. You can truly learn so much, by simply getting to know the "you" that is behind the reality of yourself.”
― Lionel Suggs

“He thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“[I]f you seek in every way to minimise my firm beliefs by your anti-feminist attacks, please recall that a small dagger or knife point can pierce a great, bulging sack and that a small fly can attack a great lion and speedily put him to flight.”
― Christine de Pizan, Le Débat Sur Le Roman De La Rose

“Like many men who consider their success incomplete, he was extraordinarily vain and consumed with a sense of his own importance.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“I was in Sarasota, Florida, on a spring-break trip with my friends Bruce and Karen Moore. Bruce and I were waiting on the beach for the rest of our crew when and a man and his grown kids came strolling up the sand. They looked at me for a minute, sort of hesitating, and then asked, "Would you mind taking a picture?" "Sure," I said, and quickly arranged all of us in a line, putting myself in the middle and motioning to Bruce to come snap the photo. Right about that time, the father said, "Actually, we were wondering if you could take a picture just of us." An understandable mistake on my part, but really embarrassing. Bruce has had a field day reminding me of that one ever since.

Lesson learned: Never assume anything about your own importance. It's a great big world, and all of us are busy living our lives. None of us knows all the time and effort that another person puts into his or her passion.”
― Amy Grant, Mosaic: Pieces of My Life So Far

“What happened was simple, even banal: I became naked, died, lost parts of my flesh and most of my ego along with a few illusions such as a belief in the uniqueness of my personal scrap of consciousness and the cosmic importance therof, and went on from there.”
― MacDonald Harris, Mortal Leap

“[S]ince you are angry at me without reason, you attack me harshly with, "Oh outrageous presumption! Oh excessively foolish pride! Oh opinion uttered too quickly and thoughtlessly by the mouth of a woman! A woman who condemns a man of high understanding and dedicated study, a man who, by great labour and mature deliberation, has made the very noble book of the Rose, which surpasses all others that were ever written in French. When you have read this book a hundred times, provided you have understood the greater part of it, you will discover that you could never have put your time and intellect to better use!"

My answer: Oh man deceived by willful opinion! I could assuredly answer but I prefer not to do it with insult, although, groundlessly, you yourself slander me with ugly accusations. Oh darkened understanding! Oh perverted knowledge ... A simple little housewife sustained by the doctrine of Holy Church could criticise your error!”
― Christine de Pizan, Le Débat Sur Le Roman De La Rose

“Behold me - I am a Line, the longest in Lineland, over six inches of Space - "Of Length," I ventured to suggest. Fool, said he, Space is Length.”
― Edwin A Abbott, Flatland

“Six-Pack didn't despise George W. Bush to the degree that Ketchum did, but she thought the president was a smirking twerp and a dumbed-down daddy's boy, and she agreed with Ketchum's assessment that Bush would be as worthless as wet crap in even the smallest crisis. If a fight broke out between two small dogs, for example, Ketchum claimed that Bush would call the fire department and ask them to bring a hose; then the president would position himself at a safe distance from the dogfight, and wait for the firemen to show up. The part Pam liked best about this assessment was that Ketchum said the president would instantly look self-important, and would appear to be actively involved--that is, once the firefighters and their hose arrived, and provided there was anything remaining of the mess the two dogs might have made of each other in the interim.”
― John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River

“Everything is as it appears, not as science claims it to be. If it feels as though the sun is less hot, then it follows that the sun must be less hot. The earth, or where on it one happens to be, seems as irrelevant as which heavenly body revolves at what speed around which: in our universe, everything revolves around us. We even turn the clocks back and forth, deciding if the mornings should be lighter or that daylight should last long into the night. This collective self-centredness inclines each one of us to imagine that our own rightful place is not only at the centre of our own lives but of everything. And while we make the world go around with our ambition, we break it with our warped sense of our own self-importance.”
― Panayotis Cacoyannis, The Love of Impossible Sums

“The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it; for, however absurd it may be thought to boast an honour by an act which shows that it was conferred without merit, yet most men seem rather inclined to confess the want of virtue than of importance.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Rambler

“The role of any person in this world is to be themselves without damaging the rest. We are important as long as the rest "is". - Rossana Condoleo”
― Rossana Condoleo

“Humble individuals will not willfully distort information in order to defend, repair, or verify their own image. For humble people, there should be no press toward self-importance and no burning need to see—or present—themselves as being better than they actually are. They should also not be particularly interested in dominating others in order to receive entitlements or to elevate their own status. On the other hand, humility should not lead people to take harsh or condemning approaches toward themselves, magnifying weaknesses and severely punishing failures while overlooking strengths and successes.”
― Christopher Peterson, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

“It’s important to recognize that it’s
not unjust to let go of those who
show no concern for you.”
― Vex King, Good Vibes, Good Life: How Self-Love Is the Key to Unlocking Your Greatness

“This, it seemed, was one of those angry natures that feeds on grievance. Nothing would madden her more than to know what she had complained of had been put right. There are such people - unfortunates who have to be angry before they can feel alive. ... perhaps it is that tragedy is more self-important than laughter.”
― Mary Stewart

“As joy and humility go together, so do duty and self-importance.”
― Donna Goddard, Geboor: Spiritual Fiction

“The more I thought about myself, the more interesting I thought it would be to everybody. Because I was interesting. I was a really interesting person and I'd done interesting things.”
― Agatha Christie, Endless Night

“You can't manifest success through self-importance.”
― Heather Holmes

“I'd planned to kill the almost-hour fingering some phone apps whose offbeat missions and designy logos had put the make on my contracted pupils. Still, as coke can't seem to help but use its hopheads to accomplish, I found a quiet study of these apps beyond me, and soon enough my antsy friends and I were in a huddle, having misconstrued our need to chatter as the impetus for lectures and confused one another for captivated listeners at whom we could not spew enough.”
― Dennis Cooper, The Marbled Swarm