Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste... years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just... take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that and walk away. But that's hard.Lois McMaster Bujold
That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.William J. H. Boetcker
Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.Abraham Joshua Heschel
True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.Ralph Waldo Emerson
To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.Joan Didion
The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs.Joan Didion