Self-Deprecating Sayings

377 sayings found from 377 authors

I am not born for one corner; my country is this whole world.

— Seneca c. 65 AD
Self-Deprecating

I have always observed that to succeed in the world, one has to seem a fool, but be wise.

— Montesquieu 1721
Self-Deprecating

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.

— Thomas Paine 1794
Self-Deprecating

I am not arguing for the rights of women but for the rights of humanity.

— Mary Wollstonecraft 1792
Self-Deprecating

We are told that an Indian cannot be made to feel a slight. I confess I have never found an Indian who could not.

— Henry David Thoreau 1849
Self-Deprecating

I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason.

— Ayn Rand 1964
Self-Deprecating

I have nothing. Therefore, I am always rich.

— Diogenes c. 350 BCE
Self-Deprecating

The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only thing that makes one happy is to love and be loved.

— Erasmus Unknown
Self-Deprecating

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.

— Paulo Freire Unknown
Self-Deprecating

Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

— Dante Alighieri c. 1308-1321
Self-Deprecating

I am an old man, and I have had many troubles, but most of them never happened.

— Leo Tolstoy Late 19th Century
Self-Deprecating

I have been so beset, and so worried, and so torn by the anxiety of this new book, that I have been made ill by it.

— Charles Dickens 1852
Self-Deprecating

I have been so much amused by the present style of female dress, that I am determined to have some of the most ridiculous of my own.

— Jane Austen 1800
Self-Deprecating

If I am to die, I will die laughing.

— Victor Hugo 1862
Self-Deprecating

I have been so completely absorbed in myself, that I have forgotten to live.

— Franz Kafka 1910
Self-Deprecating

I am sorry that I have not been able to write to you more often, but I have been very busy, and I am also very lazy.

— James Joyce 1904
Self-Deprecating

As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.

— Virginia Woolf 1938
Self-Deprecating

I am not a pacifist.

— George Orwell 1930s-1940s
Self-Deprecating

I was a modest, good-humored boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

— Aldous Huxley 1920s (referring to his youth)
Self-Deprecating

I had a lot of things to prove to myself. One was that I could live without a drink.

— Ernest Hemingway Unknown
Self-Deprecating
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