Do you often struggle in showing love towards yourself? Do you always beat yourself up when you make a mistake or when you didn’t reach the goal you had for the day? Without self-compassion and self-acceptance, you will never have inner peace. We compiled these self-acceptance quotes to help you find your self-worth and find happiness from within. Enjoy!
Self-Acceptance Quotes
1. There is no greater suffering than constantly measuring yourself and coming up short, except perhaps the realization that your suffering is hurting others. But where do we learn these things? Because, really, they are learned. We don’t come crying out of the womb because of our birth weight or because we have no money in this brand new world. We learn to measure and we learn to attach our self-worth to those measurements. – Vironika Tugaleva
2. No amount of self-improvement can make up for any lack of self-acceptance. – Robert Holden
3. I have always been better at caring for and looking after others than I have been at caring for myself. But in these later years, I have made progress. – Carl Rogers
4. When we accept ourselves for what we are, we decrease our hunger for power or the acceptance of others because our self-intimacy reinforces our inner sense of security. We are no longer preoccupied with being powerful or popular. We no longer fear criticism because we accept the reality of our human limitations. Once integrated, we are less often plagued with the desire to please others because simply being true to ourselves brings lasting peace. We are grateful for life and we deeply appreciate and love ourselves. – Brennan Manning
5. When you create yourself to make it you’re going to have to either let that creation go and take a chance on being loved or hated for who you really are…or you’re gonna have to kill who you really are and fall into your grave grasping onto a character that you never were. – Jim Carrey
6. What self-acceptance does is open up more possibilities of succeeding because you aren’t fighting yourself along the way. – Shannon Ables
7. So we scramble to fill ourselves, our time, our body, our mind. We might buy something new or lose ourselves in mindless small talk. As soon as we have a gap, we go on-line to check our email, we turn on music, we get a snack, watch television, anything to help us bury the feelings of vulnerability and deficiency lurking in our psyche.
8. Every day I wake up and ask myself, ‘How can I accept myself and others more fully? – Alaric Hutchinson
9. Your mind can never allow self-acceptance, since it is by nature self-contradictory and divisive. In fact, thinking is wholly based on a duality that prevents you from ever relaxing into yourself. – Shai Tubali
10. Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because once one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her. – Lao Tzu
11. You’re always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company. – Diane Von Furstenberg
12. You’re already stuck with yourself for a lifetime. Why not improve this relationship? – Vironika Tugaleva
13. Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship with myself. – Nathaniel Branden
14. What if each time you experienced an emotion, you acknowledged it, accepted it, and became curious about its message for you (instead of trying to make it go away or make it last longer)? Imagine how this could change your life. Imagine how heard, loved, and honoured you would feel if you really listened to yourself. – Vironika Tugaleva
15. Being authentic begins with unconditional self acceptance – imperfections and all. – Azim Jamal & Brian Tracy
16. I’m not perfect, but I’m pretty good.
17. We don’t have to wait until we are on our deathbed to realize what a waste of our precious lives it is to carry the belief that something is wrong with us. – Tara Brach
18. I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do. – Brené Brown
19. To say I love you one must know first how to say the I. – Ayn Rand
20. Self-approval and self-acceptance in the now are the main keys to positive changes in every area of our lives. – Louise Hay
21. You can succeed if nobody else believes it, but you will never succeed if you don’t believe in yourself. – William J. H. Boetcker
22. No amount of self-improvement can make up for any lack of self-acceptance. – Robert Holden
23. Love thy neighbor yes, but love thyself first. – Solange Nicole
24. Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. – Roy Bennett
25. To be nobody but yourself in a world that’s doing its best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting. – E. E. Cummings
26. You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are. – Yogi Bhajan
27. Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. – Lucille Ball
28. To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. – Nhat Hanh
29. Self-acceptance has been a blessed by product of middle age. – Candice Bergen
30. Change is possible, but it must start with self-acceptance. – Alexander Lowen
31. When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn’t healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits anything that kept me small. My judgement called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving. – Kim McMilllen
32. Accept everything about yourself I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end no apologies, no regrets. – Henry A. Kissinger
33. Acceptance is the key to everything. – Michael J Fox
34. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. – Sharon Salzberg
35. Self-acceptance begets acceptance from others, which begets even deeper, more genuine self-acceptance. It can be done. But no one is going to bestow it on you. It is a gift only you can give yourself. – Camryn Manheim
36. Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves. – Nathaniel Branden
37. I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can’t conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood. – Saul Bellow
38. Yours is only what you always have on you. – Peter Deunov
39. Becoming acquainted with yourself is a price well worth paying for the love that will really address your needs. – Daphne Rose Kingma
40. My willingness to be intimate with my own deep feelings creates the space for intimacy with another. – Shakti Gawain
41. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. – Carl Gustav Jung
42. You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are. – Yogi Bhajan
43. We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light. – Mary Dunbar
44. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
45. Everything worth having costs something, and the price of true love is self-knowledge.
46. Becoming acquainted with yourself is a price well worth paying for the love that will really address your needs. – Daphne Rose Kingma
47. My willingness to be intimate with my own deep feelings creates the space for intimacy with another. – Shakti Gawain
48. People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within. – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
49. Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.
50. Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own. – Carl Gustav Jung
51. The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else. – E. E. Cummings
52. Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one. – Eleanor Roosevelt
53. To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
54. She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself. – Anais Nin
55. I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have. – Abraham Lincoln
56. The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself. – Steve Maraboli
57. The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I’m not going to let myself pull me down anymore. – C. JoyBell C.
58. Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
59. Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. – William James
60. It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to. – W.C. Fields
61. Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are. – Malcolm S. Forbes
62. Scarcity of self-value cannot be remedied by money, recognition, affection, attention or influence. – Gary Zukav
63. The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. – William James
64. To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. – Thich Nhat Hanh
65. Our entire life consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are. – Jean Anouih
66. I’ve finally stopped running away from myself. Who else is there better to be? – Goldie Hawn
67. Your problem is you’re too busy holding onto your unworthiness. – Ram Dass
68. To accept ourselves as we are means to value our imperfections as much as our perfections. – Sandra Bierig
69. Believing in our hearts that who we are is enough is the key to a more satisfying and balanced life. – Ellen Sue Stern
70. You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can make others happy.
71. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. – Buddha
72. You can’t build joy on a feeling of self-loathing. – Ram Dass
73. It’s not your job to like me it’s mine. – Byron Katie
74. Your task is not to seek for Love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. – Rumi
75. Love is the great miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives. – Louise L. Hay
76. A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror. – Ken Keyes
77. Loving yourself does not mean being self-absorbed or narcissistic, or disregarding others. Rather it means welcoming yourself as the most honored guest in your own heart, a guest worthy of respect, a lovable companion. – Margo Anand
78. If you aren’t good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you’ll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren’t even giving to yourself. – Barbara De Angelis
79. Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting. – William Shakespeare
80. To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don’t wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now. – Alan Cohen
81. I celebrate myself, and sing myself. – Walt Whitman
82. Find the love you seek, by first finding the love within yourself. Learn to rest in that place within you that is your true home. – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
83. I love myself for I am a beloved child of the universe and the universe lovingly takes care of me now. – Louise Hay
84. Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are feeling, love yourself for feeling it. – Thaddeus Golas
85. There is nothing noble about being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self. – Hindu Proverb
86. It is never too late to be what you might have been. – George Eliot
87. Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. – Veronica A. Shoffstall
88. Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness. – Jean Vanier
89. When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life. – Jean Shinoda Bolen
90. It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves. – Edmund Hillary
91. When you stop living your life based on what others think of you real life begins. At that moment, you will finally see the door of self-acceptance opened. – Shannon L. Alder
92. Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her. – Lao Tzu
93. It’s not your job to like me. It’s mine. – Byron Katie
94. Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world. – Eleanor Roosevelt
95. You’re always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company. – Diane Von Furstenberg
96. The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. – C.G. Jung
97. The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself. – Mark Twain
98. I don’t need anyone else to distract me from myself anymore, like I always thought I would. – Charlotte Eriksson
99. If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation. – Jiddu Krishnamurti
100. Self-improvement without self-love is like building a house upon sand. You can build and build, but it will always sink. – Vironika Tugaleva
101. No amount of self-improvement can make up for any lack of self-acceptance. – Robert Holden
102. Self-acceptance means living the life you choose to live without worrying what others think about you. It doesn’t matter what someone else thinks about you. What matters is what you think about yourself. – Sadiqua Hamdan
103. One woman filled with self-love and self-acceptance is a model more super than any cover girl. – Amy Leigh Mercree
104. When your own approval means more than the approval of others, that is self-love. – Vironika Tugaleva
105. Our task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. – Rumi
106. Loving yourself does not mean being self-absorbed or narcissistic, or disregarding others. Rather it means welcoming yourself as the most honored guest in your own heart, a guest worthy of respect, a lovable companion. – Margo Anand
107. It’s ok if you mess up. You should give yourself a break. – Billy Joel
108. You are beautiful, no matter what they say. – Christina Aguilera
109. Genuine self-acceptance is not derived from the power of positive thinking, mind games or pop psychology. It is an act of the faith in the God of grace. – Brennan Manning
110. Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself. – Montaigne
111. I used to be self-conscious about my height, but then I thought ‘F*** that, I’m Harry Potter’. – Daniel Radcliffe
112. Self-love has very little to do with how you feel about your outer self. It’s about accepting all of yourself. – Tyra Banks
113. I had to grow to love my body. I did not have a good self-image at first. Finally, it occurred to me, I’m either going to love me or hate me. And I chose to love myself. Then everything kind of sprung from there. Things that I thought weren’t attractive became sexy. Confidence makes you sexy. – Queen Latifah
114. Sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got and fifty percent what people think you’ve got. – Sophia Loren
115. Let yourself remember to love again, starting with you loving you. – Miya Yamanouchi
116. I have known friendship love, parental love, romantic love, family love and unrequited love in my lifetime, but the only love that made a difference was self-love. You don’t need confirmation from the world or another person that you matter. You simply do matter. When you finally believe that truth and live it then you can do amazing things with your life. – Shannon L. Alder
117. Accept yourself: flaws, quirks, talents, secret thoughts, all of it, and experience true liberation. – Amy Leigh Mercree
118. Do something every day that is loving toward your body and gives you the opportunity to enjoy the sensations of your body. – Golda Poretsky
119. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. – Steve Jobs
120. The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I’m not going to let myself pull me down anymore. – C. Joybell C.
121. There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself. – Brian Andreas
122. Being extremely honest with oneself is a good exercise. – Sigmund Freud
123. There is time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go. – Tennessee Williams
124. Enjoy life – there are no re-runs. – Shirley Lowery
125. There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub. – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
126. The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours it is an amazing journey and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins. – Bob Moawad
127. When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn’t healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits, anything that kept me small. My judgement called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving. – Kim McMilllen
128. If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place. – Nora Roberts
129. The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. – Anna Quindlen
130. I was once afraid of people saying ‘Who does she think she is?’ Now I have the courage to stand and say ‘This is who I am.’ – Oprah Winfrey
131. Your life will be transformed when you make peace with your shadow. The caterpillar will become a breathtakingly beautiful butterfly. You will no longer have to pretend to be someone you’re not. You will no longer have to prove you’re good enough. When you embrace your shadow you will no longer have to life in fear. Find the gifts of your shadow and you will finally revel in all the glory of your true self. Then you will have the freedom to create the life you have always desired. – Debbie Ford
132. Each aspect within us needs understanding and compassion. If we are unwilling to give it to ourselves how can we expect the world to give it to us? – Debbie Ford
133. We can’t fight darkness with darkness. We have to find compassion and embrace the darkness inside of us in order to understand it and, ultimately, to transcend it. – Debbie Ford
134. The greatest act of courage is to be and to own all of who you are without apology, without excuses, without masks to cover the truth of who you are. – Debbie Ford
135. As you become more clear about who you really are, you’ll be better able to decide what is best for you the first time around. – Oprah Winfrey
136. Self-esteem means knowing you are the dream. – Oprah Winfrey
137. I am a woman in process. I’m just trying like everybody else. – Oprah Winfrey
138. It isn’t until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are – not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within – that you can begin to take control. – Oprah Winfrey
139. Self-esteem comes from being able to define the world in your own terms and refusing to abide by the judgments of others. – Oprah Winfrey
140. All these years I’ve been feeling like I was growing into myself. Finally, I feel grown. – Oprah Winfrey
141. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. – Carl Jung
142. Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside, awakes. – Carl Jung
143. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. – Carl Jung
144. Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. – Carl Jung
145. The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. – Carl Jung
146. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls. – Carl Jung
147. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. – Carl Jung
148. Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event. – Carl Jung
