Richard Francis Burton - Self Quotes

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Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
All other Life is living Death, a world where none but Phantoms dwell,
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the camel-bell.

Richard Francis Burton
From self-approval seek applause: What ken not men thou kennest, thou!
Spurn ev'ry idol others raise: Before thine own Ideal bow:
Be thine own Deus: Make self free, liberal as the circling air:
Thy Thought to thee an Empire be; break every prison'ing lock and bar.

Richard Francis Burton
Friends of my youth, a last adieu! haply some day we meet again;
Yet ne'er the self-same men shall meet; the years shall make us other men.
III

Richard Francis Burton
The Pilgrim's sole consolation is in self-cultivation, and in the pleasures of the affections. This sympathy may be an indirect self-love, a reflection of the light of egotism: still it is so transferred as to imply a different system of convictions. It requires a different name: to call benevolence "self-love " is to make the fruit or flower not only depend upon a root for development (which is true), but the very root itself (which is false). And, finally, his ideal is of the highest: his praise is reserved for:
—Lives
Lived in obedience to the inner law
Which cannot alter.

Richard Francis Burton
Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the self, forget the "I,"
When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man, the Man begins to die

Richard Francis Burton
Man worships self: his God is Man; the struggling of the mortal mind
To form its model as 'twould be, the perfect of itself to find.

Richard Francis Burton
When doctors differ who decides amid the milliard-headed throng?
Who save the madman dares to cry: "'Tis I am right, you all are wrong"?
"You all are right, you all are wrong," we hear the careless Soofi say,
"For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day."
"Thy faith why false, my faith why true? 'tis all the work of Thine and Mine,
"The fond and foolish love of self that makes the Mine excel the Thine."
Cease then to mumble rotten bones; and strive to clothe with flesh and blood
The skel'eton; and to shape a Form that all shall hail as fair and good.

Richard Francis Burton