Palby Self-care

Self-care quotes

20 self-care quotes, each one checked against its source

Each line is traced to the book or talk it came from, so you know who said it.

"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, chapter 27 (1847)

The quotes

  1. 1.
    "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, chapter 27 (1847)
  2. 2.
    "I exist as I am, that is enough,"Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, in Leaves of Grass
  3. 3.
    "Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons, / It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road, in Leaves of Grass
  4. 4.
    "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance"Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband, Act III (1895)
  5. 5.
    "nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul"Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4, translated by George Long
  6. 6.
    "Let not future things disturb thee"Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 7, translated by George Long
  7. 7.
    "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in Essays: First Series (1841)
  8. 8.
    "I love a broad margin to my life."Henry David Thoreau, Walden, the chapter called Sounds (1854)
  9. 9.
    "Simplify, simplify."Henry David Thoreau, Walden, the chapter called Where I Lived, and What I Lived For (1854)
  10. 10.
    "I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship."Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868-69)
  11. 11.
    "isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, chapter 21 (1908)
  12. 12.
    "Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, chapter 58 (1813)
  13. 13.
    "What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?"George Eliot, Middlemarch, chapter 72 (1871-72)
  14. 14.
    "No one is useless in this world ... who lightens the burden of it for any one else."Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (1864-65)
  15. 15.
    "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to."Henry James, The Ambassadors (1903)
  16. 16.
    "And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair."Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, the part called On Clothes (1923)
  17. 17.
    "Hope is the thing with feathers"Emily Dickinson, Poems, Series 2 (1891)
  18. 18.
    "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, chapter 1 (1929)
  19. 19.
    "we suffer more often in imagination than in reality"Seneca, Letter 13, Moral Letters to Lucilius, translated by Richard Gummere (1917)
  20. 20.
    "Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time."John Lubbock, The Use of Life, chapter 4 (1894)

Why some famous lines aren't here

Some self-care quotes online have no source, or the wrong one. If we couldn't read a line in the book or talk it's credited to, we left it out.

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Common questions

Why do some start with a small letter?

Because they start partway through a sentence. We've kept the author's exact words.

Can you tell me what these mean?

We'd rather you read them your own way.