Ego

The ego is the center of consciousness;

the Self is the center of the total personality,
which includes consciousness, the unconscious and the ego.
The Self is both the whole and the center.
The ego is a self-contained little circle off the center,
but contained in the whole.
So the ego might best be described as the lesser center of the personality;
the Self is the greatest center.
-John A. Sanford

The importance and unimportance of the self

cannot be exaggerated.

-Reginald Blyth

The whole tragedy in life
is losing sight of one's natural self,
and the greatest gain in life
is coming in touch with one's real self.
The real self is covered by many layers of ego.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

It is very difficult for man to realize his true self,
because the self he knows is a most limited self.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

And it is this ego,
That hath enfeebled the soul.
-Tulsi Da

There is no such thing as the dark night of the spirit,
there is only dark night of the ego.
-Frances Vaughan

What we call the ego
is the individual’s particular way
of not being fully present.
-Ivan Granger

Ego-mind has only two modes:
trying to get something and trying to get rid of something.
-Hans Laurentius

One of the means for determining the presence of ego
is examining out relationship with time.
Invariably, if one's thoughts are dwelling in the past
or preparing for the future,
we can be assured that ego is somewhere nearby.
-David A. Cooper

The ego cannot exist without comparisons,
hence is you really want to drop the ego, drop comparing.
You will be surprised, where has the ego gone?
Compare and it is there; and it is there only in comparison.
It is not an actuality, it is a fiction created out of comparison.
-Chandra Mohan Jain, "Osho"

Reality is simply the loss of the ego.
Destroy the ego by seeking its identity.
-Ramana Maharshi

To know the Self is to be the Self -
as there are not two separate selves.
-Ramana Maharshi

What is the ego?
But a dream of what you really are.
-A Course in Miracles

The ego is a mental concept,
not a physical thing.
-Thubten Yeshe

We have only to eliminate the ego-notion
by succeeding in the difficult task of understanding
that it does not exist except as a notion.
-Wei Wu Wei

The ego is the illusory structure created by the soul
in its effort to maintain the boundaries of its belief.
-Robert Vaughn Abrams

We do not possess an 'ego'.
We are possessed by the idea of one.
-Wei Wu Wei

The ego is a personal myth,
a story we tell ourselves about who we are.
That story can change, expand, or grow silent.
-Ivan M. Granger

The ego is mind's belief
that it is completely on its own.
-A Course in Miracles

Ego (is) an illusional sense of selfhood
which causes the soul to feel that it is independent -
separate from the one field of Consciousness.
-Roy Eugene Davis

The idea of a self

is ignorance personified.

-Zen Graffiti

What we call ourself is only the ego.
Our true Self is the Divine.
-Mirra Alfassa, "The Mother"

Human nature is shot through in all its stuff with the thread of the ego;
even when one tries to get away from it,
it is in front or could be behind
all the thoughts and actions like a shadow.
-Aurobindo Ghose

Our ego-mind emerges from the void.
It volunteers to be the center of our personality.
It assures us that it can function
as the center and executive of the personality.
Facile, it attempts to define our relationship
to ourself and the world,
yet at every moment it trembles with insecurity at its task:
to maintain the illusion of separateness.
-Bruce Burger

The ego is a counterfeit identity
that experiences itself as separate from everything else
and that consequently relates to everything else as objects
that can be possessed or lost.
-Georg Feuerstein

The ego is a thought, like a garment...
It's an imposter, as a mask, as a persona, as a veil, or a sweater.
Stop misidentifying the Self with its garment.

-Merle Antoinette Roberson (Toni), "Gangaji"

The ego is like an invisible man
whose presence is revealed by the clothes he wears;
as he undresses, he cases to be visible.
-Georg Feuerstein

The mind is a bundle of thoughts,
The thoughts arise because there is a thinker.
The thinker is the ego.
The ego, if sought, will automatically vanish.
-Ramana Maharshi

The Ego is nothing but a memory,
a set of definitions which are limiting.
You believe strongly in these patterns
which you yourself have brought about
and you mechanically repeat them.
It is only habit that maintains them,
makes them seem permanent.
Let them go for once and for all.
-Jean Klein

The ego is first and foremost a body ego.
-Sigmund Freud

The ego is not a conscious intelligence
but a subconscious reaction mechanism
rooted in the field of nature.
-David Frawley

The ego occurs at a subliminal level,
beneath the conscious mind
and its discriminating intelligence.
It is a vital reaction
much like the urges to eat and to breathe.
-David Frawley

The ego stands to the self
as the moved to the mover,
or as object to subject.
-Carl Jung

The ego is not an entity but an activity.
It is a contraction of the field of Radiance.
-Albert Franklin Jones, "Da Free John"

The ego gropes in darkness
while the Self lives in light.
-Katha Upanishad

I find that the past dissolves,
when Self is present,
just as shadow disappears
when light is present.
-Shaun de Warren

The ego is an iceberg.
Melt it. Melt it.
Melt it with deep love,
so it disappears
and you become part of the ocean.
-Chandra Mohan Jain, "Osho"

It is within our power...
with earnest and incessant endeavour,
to eradicate the ego - the cause of all misery -
by stopping all mental activity born of the ego.
-Ramana Maharshi

Ego death is never anything that the ego itself can perform;
it is always beyond the ego's control.
-Georg Feuerstein

Ego-death coincides with the end of all the experiential possibilities
that the ego could possibly project ahead of itself.
-Georg Feuerstein

The mystery of perfection lies in the annihilation -
not annihilation of the real self,
but of the annihilation of the false self
which man has cherished in this heart
and has allowed to torture his life.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

As self dies out, the true self grows.
-Christmas Humphreys

If the mind could remain undisturbed
by differences and distinctions,
the concept of an ego would die away.
-Asvaghosa

Destroy 'the ego', hound it, beat it, snub it, tell it where it gets off?
Great fun, no doubt, but where is it? Must you not find it first?
Isn't there a word about catching your goose before you can cook it?
The great difficulty here is that there isn't one.
-Wei Wu Wei

The more a human being feels himself a self,
tries to intensify this self
and reach a never attainable perfection,
the more drastically he steps out of the center of being,
which is no longer now his own center,
and the further he removes himself from it.
-Eugene Herrigel

The perfect man has no self.
-Chuang-tzu

We can't know our Self
while thinking of ourselves.
-Steven Sadleir

The less self there is,
the more there is Self.
-Meister Eckhart

If you would soar beyond the circling sky,
Free yourself from thoughts of "me"and "I."
-Farid ud-Din Attar

Renunciation is not the discarding of external things
but of the ego.
-Ramana Maharshi

To renounce the I and its voice, renounce -
this alone gives power.
-Gunnar Ekelof

Renounce this unripe I
and keep the ripe I.
-Ramakrishna

The complete negation of the ego
becomes its greatest affirmation.
-Dozen Zenji

In the encounter with splendor,
or vastness, or death, or the void, or suffering,
the ego is shattered.
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

It is by the process of crucifixion
that a person refines the ego.
It is a hard grain,
and it must be ground til it becomes a fine powder,
our of which a paste is made.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

The real meaning of crucifixion
is to crucify this false self,
and so resurrect the true self.
As long as the false self is not crucified,
the true self is still not realized.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Ego and Essence are just two ways of looking at the self,
not irreconcilable forces in perpetual battle.
The battle is all in our heads!
-Susan Rhodes

The only thing that ever had the thought about destroying your ego
was your ego.
-Steven Gray, "Adyashanti"

Finding courage involves integrating the power of the ego,

not killing it off or trying to get rid of it.

Integration of the ego brings it under our control

and we can use its power and energy to assist us.

-Nanci Shandera

Our purpose is not to slay the ego,
but to absorb it completely into the fullness of our true Being.
The ego or finite self must eventually become one
with the Higher, Infinite Self.
-Ann Mortifee

The ego is like a rose
and it is also like the thorns which surround the rose.
It takes the place of the thorns when it is not cultivated,
and it becomes the rose when it is refined.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

The same ego which begins by being our worst enemy,
will in the end, if developed and cultivated and refined,
become our best friend.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Don't try to get rid of the ego-sensation.
Take is, so long as it lasts,
as a feature or play of the total process -
like a cloud or wave, or like feeling warm or cold,
or anything else that happens of itself.
Getting rid of one's ego is the last resort of invincible egoism!
It simply confirms and strengthens the reality of the feeling.
But when this feeling of separateness is approached and accepted
like any other sensation, it evaporates like the mirage that it is.
-Alan Watts

You never kill the ego.
You only find that it lives in a larger house than you thought.
-Stanley Keleman

What is required is not the destruction of the ego,
but the transformation of its attitude
that its major function is to serve itself and nothing else.
-Charles Ponce

The end of a man is to let the spirit in him permeate
his whole being, his soul, flesh, and affections.
He attains his deepest self by losing his selfish ego.
-Robert Musil

When the ego is broken, essence will quite naturally take over.
The collapse comes at the moment 

when the ego games are completely exposed and understood:
illusion is shattered, subjectivity is destroyed; karma is burned.
-Oscar Ichazo

The separate self must melt or be reborn
Into a truth beyond the Mind's appeal.
-Aurobindo Ghose

The personal ego must go
for the universal and cosmic identity, Satchidananda,
to be maintained.
-Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

The self of man must be made one with
the Self of all.
-Aurobindo Ghose

The whole show but one lone puppeteer
hid behind his screen of art.
He tears it away reveals himself alone
and all illusions vanish into nothing.
-Ibn al-Farid