arts and culture on Self-Absorption

"There are who never learn to see anything except in its relation to themselves, nor that relation except as fancied by themselves; and, this being a withering habit of mind, they keep growing dr...

Hell, then, is the trajectory of a soul, living a self-absorbed, self-centered life, going on and on forever.

Perfection....it functions as a form of myopia, a preoccupation with self-image that can stunt emotional growth.

You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.

“The assumption that everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism.”

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson points out our blind-spots with respect to pride: We rarely think of ourselves as proud. I...

Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our wo...

God of the Impossible – Father, Son and Holy Spirit: There’s nothing too hard for you to do, Nothing too complex for You to understand, No place we go that You’re not there, No sin too heinous tha...

You're always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determinin...

The people I know who are the most concerned about their individuality, who probe constantly into motives, who are always turned inwards toward their own reactions, usually become less and less indivi...

A predominant characteristic . . . of the behavior of those I call evil is scapegoating. Because in their hearts they consider themselves above reproach, they must lash out at anyone who does reproach...

An obsession with righteousness (leading invariably to self-righteousness) is the normal human condition.

Self-acceptance gives assent to be who I am—a small, limited person with bents toward sin as well as hungers for holiness—and allows me to live with all my contradictions, because my will, at least on...

Expert Pamela Rutledge explained in an article for Psychology Today that taking selfies is indicative of the tornado of narcissism. The selfie is the appropriate snapshot of the state of identity in t...

Looking into his life and out to the wider world, Kenneth Gergen writes about The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, arguing that “social saturation brings with it a general lo...

To me, growing into spiritual maturity is becoming less self-conscious and more God-conscious.

The great mistake made by most of the Lord’s people is in hoping to discover in themselves that which is to be found in Christ alone.

Insecurity is a funny thing. It makes us into someone we’re not as a way to cope with someone we used to be. For me, it started at home. Growing up, my dad had been critical of my mother’s weight, and...

Individualism at first dries up only the source of public virtues, but, in the long run, it attacks and destroys all the others and is finally absorbed into egoism.

Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends, so that after h...

Cosmic ingratitude is living in the illusion that you are spiritually self-sufficient. It is taking credit for something that was a gift. It is the belief that you know best how to live, that you have...

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.

A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow. While it retains its visibility, it loses the quality of rising into sight from some darker ground which ...

We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

Define yourself radically as beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is an illusion.

It is estimated that over 80 percent of the books published in any given year are about the self.

Before God can divulge our God-given identities in our desert-of-the soul wilderness experiences, there is something we need to know: he requires that we be brutally honest with ourselves and with him...

Until you have given up your “self” to Him you will not have a real self.