The Quote Bag

Quotes About Enneagram Styles

Ones
People who compare reality to a set of standards. May be objective, balanced and morally heroic or repressive, critical and perfectionistic.

"If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire." - Irvin Yalom

"Laughter does not seem to be a sin, but it leads to sin." - St. John Chrysostom

"The forgiveness of the world can only be accomplished by the judgment of the world." - Ralph W. Sockman

"As a man gets angry, he falls into error." - Talmud

"He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good." - Rabindranath Tagore

"It's better to go out burnished from use than rusty from principle."-Garrison Keillor

"Our senses don't deceive us: our judgment does." - Goethe

"Logic is one thing and commonsense another." - Elbert Hubbard

"It is not reason that gives us our moral orientation, it is sensitivity." - Maurice Barres

"If it be maintained that a man's judgments are themselves completely determined, that he cannot help making the judgments he makes, the answer is that this makes nonsense of all knowledge." - Morris Ginsberg

"Reason cannot save us. Nothing can; but reason can mitigate the cruelty of living." - Philip Rieff

"How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong." - Sophocles

"The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it." - Pascal

"Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure." - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"There may be said to be two classes of people in the world: those who divide the people of the world into two classes and those who don't." - Robert Benchley

Read About Ones

Twos
People who see the world interpersonally and define themselves through service to others. May be selfless, loving and giving or dependent, prideful and hostile.


"(Modesty) ... The art of encouraging people to find out for themselves how wonderful you are." - Anon

"Pride: this acceptable disease, which so sweetly sets upon us, ravishing our senses, lulls our souls asleep, puffs up our hearts as so many bladders." - Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

"Never speak of yourself to others; make them talk about themselves instead: therein lies the whole art of pleasing." - J. and E. de Goncourt

"The art of pleasing is the art of deceiving." - Vauvenargues

"We are rarely proud when we are alone." - Voltaire

"There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with." - George Santayana

"The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people." - Leo Tolstoy

"The neophyte therapist, as well as the experienced one, is often stunned by the extent of the hostility with which good intentions are met." - Sheldon Roth

"No sickness worse than imagining thyself to be perfect can afflict thy soul." - Jallaludin Rumi

"Frequently a big advantage can be gained by knowing how to give in at the right moment." - Fenelon

"No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own." - Longfellow, "Endymion,"

"The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft." - Eric Hoffer

Read About Twos

Threes
People who measure themselves by external achievement and the roles that they play. May be truthful, accomplished and sincere or conniving, competitive and false.

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers." - Daniel Boorstin

"Pretending is a virtue. If you can't pretend, you can't be king." - Luigi Pirandello

"Lies are essential to humanity." - Marcel Proust

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?" - Robert Browning

"He that listens after what people say of him shall never have peace." - Thomas Fuller

"Success has ruined many a man." - Benjamin Franklin

"Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is acheived. Success is the lurking-place of failure; but who can tell when the turning point will come?" - Lao-Tse

"Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question." - Albert Camus

"When a man is trying to sell you something, don't imagine he is that polite all the time." - Edgar Watson Howe

"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true." - Nathaniel Hawthorne

"(A ruler) cannot and should not keep his word when to do so would go against his interests or when the reason he pledged it no longer holds." - Machiavelli

"One often passes from love to ambition but rarely returns from ambition to love." - La Rochefoucauld

"Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits." - Robert Louis Stevenson

Read About Threes

Fours
People who live principally in their imagination and feelings. May be artistic, articulate and inspiring or whiny, elitist and negative.

"It is best never to have been born. But who among us has such luck? One in a million, perhaps." - Alfred Polgar

"Dying is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well." - Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus,"

"That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet." - Emily Dickinson

"It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures." - William Hazlitt

"Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded." - William Hazlitt

"For the world, I count it not an inn, but an hospital; and a place not to live in, but to die in." - Sir Thomas Browne

"The beautiful bird gets caged." - Chinese proverb

"'To the discontented no chair is easy." - Benjamin Franklin

"Seldom is a Gothic head more beautiful than when broken." - Andre Malraux

"Nothing is so costly as the pursuit of a cure for imaginary ills." - Francois de Fenelon

"Nothing blocks happiness like happiness remembered." - Andre Gide

"The satisfied, the happy, do not live; they fall asleep in habit, near neighbor to annihilation." - Miguel de Unamuno

"Talent is often a defect of character." - Karl Kraus

"We're all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins-for life." - Tennessee Williams

Read About Fours

Fives
People who pull back from the world and live in their mind. May be wise, farsighted and knowledgeable or abstract, stingy and schizoid.

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading." - Logan Pearsall Smith

"The miser puts all his gold pieces in a coffer; but as soon as the coffer is closed, it's the same as if it were empty." - Andre Gide

"A bashful dog rarely gets fat." - Swedish proverb

"It is one of the misfortunes in life that one must read thousands of books only to discover that one need not have read them." - Thomas de Quincy

"To whom you tell your secrets, to him you resign your liberty." - Spanish proverb

"The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes." - Jonathan Swift

"Solitude is fine when you are at peace with yourself and have something definite to do." - Goethe

"Action will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve" - Tehyi Hsieh

"Sometimes I think, sometimes I am ." - Paul Valery

"One can acquire anything in solitude, except character." - Stendhal

"One does not write a love story while making love." - Colette

"It is not by sitting still at a grand distance and calling the human race larvae, that people are to be helped." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Books are a finer world within the world." - Alexander Smith

"Those who know their minds do not necessarily know their hearts." - La Rochefoucalt

Read About Fives

Sixes

People who anticipate the world's dangers. When healthy they are often courageous, loyal and effective or cowardly, masochistic and paranoid.

"Fear is faithlessness." - George MacDonald

"Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind." - Shakespeare

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anais Nin

"A reasonable probability is the only certainty." - Edgar Watson Howe

"It takes more strength of character to withstand good fortune than bad." - La Rochefoucauld

"Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome." - Samuel Johnson

"Faith always implies the disbelief of a lesser fact in favor of a greater." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing ... Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature." - Helen Keller

"Only in growth, reform and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"A thief believes everybody steals." - E.W. Howe

"Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure, and generally occasion ourselves." - Benjamin Disraeli

"The pseudo-conscience ... demands not obedience to the inner law of our being, but conformity to super-imposed convention." - Francis G. Wickes

"To fear the worst often cures the worse." - Shakespeare

"The only known cure for fear is faith." - WIlliam S. Sadler

Read About Sixes
 

Sevens

People who look for multiple choices and positive futures. May be well-rounded, affirming and generous. When unhealthy they can be narcissistic, escapist and insatiable.

"Nothing is wonderful when you get used to it." - E.W. Howe

"Enthusiasm is that temper of the mind in which the imagination has got the better of the judgment." - William Warburton

"Be careful what you dream: soon your dreams will be dreaming you." - Willie Nelson

"If we wish not to go backwards, we must run." - Pelagius

"I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun." - Virginia Wolff

"When I haven't any blue, I use red." - Picasso

"Anyone who lives within his means suffers from a lack of imagination." - Lionel Stander

"Gluttony is mankind's exclusive prerogative." - Brillat-Savarin

"Almost any event will put on a new face when received with cheerful acceptance and no questions asked." - Henry S. Haskins

"Digestion is the great secret of life." - Sydney Smith

"Keep belly lightly loaded, if mind would wisdom see;For bodies crammed to bursting, make empty souls to be." - Shaikh Saadi

"The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." - A Child's Garden of Verses

"What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior?" - Walt Whitman

"Me this uncharted freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance desires;
My hopes no more much change their name,
I long for a repose that ever is the same." - Wordsworth

Read About Sevens

Eights
People who need to be strong, to prevail over circumstance. When healthy they often are powerful, protective and committed to a cause. When unhealthy they can be destructive, excessive and sadistic.

"A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wound green." - Francis Bacon

"The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less." - Eldridge Cleaver

"Tenderness is total love, whereas justice is only a part of love, though it believes itself, mistakenly, to be the whole." - C.F. Ramuz

"To hit someone means to adopt his point of view." - Paul Valery

"He who strikes the first blow admits he's lost the argument." - Chinese proverb

"The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress." - Joseph Joubert

"If you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbor." - Maeterlinck

"Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes." - Antisthenes

"Minds are conquered not by arms but by love and magnanimity." - Spinoza

"When you have gained a victory, do not push it too far." - Eustace Budgell

"If you bow at all, bow low." - Chinese proverb

"Strong men can always afford to be gentle. Only the weak are intent on "giving as good as they get." - Elbert Hubbard

"My, how beautiful is war! its songs, its leisure!" - Guillaume Apollinaire, L'Adieu du cavalier (Apollinaire died in WWI aged 38)

"He who makes a beast of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man." - Samuel Johnson

"The softest thing in the universe, overcomes the hardest thing in the universe. Hence I know the value of non-action.-Tao Te Ching

Read About Eights

Nines
People who are receptive to their environment and play down their own presence. When healthy they often are loving, modest and trusting. When unhealthy they can be stubborn, lazy and soul-dead.

"Even where sleep is concerned, too much is a bad thing." - Homer

"I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart." - Jerome K. Jerome

"The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master." - Kahlil Gibran

"To forget someone means to think of him." - Jean De La Bruyere

"Indecision is like the stepchild: if he doesn't wash his hands, he is called dirty, if he does, he is wasting the water." - African proverb

"A useless life is only an earlier death." - J.W. von Goethe

"My policy is to have no policy." - Abraham Lincoln

"A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom." - Alfred de Vigny

"Good temper is an estate for life." - William Hazlitt

"To accept whatever comes regardless of the consequences is ... to be full of that love which comes from a sense of at-one-ness with whatever." - John Cage

"The fine art of executive decision consists in not deciding questions that are not now pertinent, in not deciding prematurely, in not making decisions that cannot be made effective, and in not making decisions that others should make." - Chester I. Barnard

"Do not push forward a wagon; you will only raise the dust about yourself. Do not think of all your anxieties; you will only make yourself ill." - Shih King

"He who acts, spoils; he who grasps, lets slip." - Lao-Tse

"Capacities clamor to be used, and cease to clamor only when they are well used." - Maslow

"The Tao does nothing yet nothing is left undone." - Lao-tzu

Read About Nines

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