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Are you dating someone who constantly seeks admiration but couldn’t care less about what you feel and what your needs are?
Or maybe you are friends with someone who has an inflated sense of self-importance and does not have even the slightest empathy toward others?
If this sounds familiar, then you are probably dealing with a narcissist—one who always has the urge to control people, and who ruthlessly demands his or her needs be met.
Narcissists can be major life stressors—a source of unhappiness and depression. So, how do you deal with people who have narcissistic tendencies, or even narcissistic personality disorder (NPD)?
Why Read Narcissist Quotes?
In this article, we have gathered 100 narcissist quotes that can help you handle a situation involving narcissist abuse. These quotes will give you some insights into how to determine who is a narcissist, and what you should do to deal with them.
When do you know that you are dealing with a narcissist? And more importantly, how do you determine if the relationship is s toxic that you need to get out of it?
Narcissistic Relationship Abuse Quotes
- “But that’s the thing about narcissists. They can try to fool you, with all their heart, but in the end, they’re just fooling themselves.” – Ellie Fox
- “Narcissistic love is riding on the rollercoaster of disaster filled with a heart full of tears.” – Sheree Griffin
- “Since narcissists deep down feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world’s fault.” – M. Scott Peck
- “When a toxic person can no longer control you, they will try to control how others see you. The misinformation will feel unfair, but you stay above it, trusting that other people will eventually see the truth just like you did.” – Jill Blakeway
- “The narcissist devours people, consumes their output, and casts the empty, writhing shells.” – Sam Vaknin
- “When we meet and fall into the gravitational pull of a narcissist, we are entering a significant life lesson that involves learning how to create boundaries, self-respect, and resilience. Through trial and error (and a lot of pain), our connection with narcissists teaches us the necessary lessons we need to become mature empaths.” – Mateo Sol
- “Love doesn’t die a natural death. Love has to be killed, either by neglect or narcissism.” – Frank Salvato
- “A narcissist paints a picture of themselves as being the victim or innocent in all aspects. They will be offended by the truth. But what is done in the dark will come to light. Time has a way of showing people’s true colors.” – Karla Grimes
- “How starved you must have been that my heart became a meal for your ego.” – Amanda Torroni
- “Relationship with a narcissist in a nutshell: You will go from being the perfect love of their life to nothing you do is ever good enough. You will give everything and they will take it all and give you less and less in return. You will end up depleted, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and probably financially, and then get blamed for it.” – Bree Bonchay
- “Realize that narcissists have an addiction disorder. They are strongly addicted to feeling significant. Like any addict, they will do whatever it takes to get this feeling often. That is why they are manipulative and future fakers. They promise change, but can't deliver if it interferes with their addiction. That is why they secure back up supply.” – Shannon L. Alder
- “Narcissists will destroy your life, erode your self-esteem, and do it with such stealth as to make you feel that you are the one that's letting them down.”
- “A man who loves others based solely on how they make him feel, or what they do for him, is really not loving others at all — but loving only himself.” – Criss Jami
- “Relationships with narcissists are held in place by the hope of a ‘someday better,’ with little evidence to support it will ever arrive.”– Ramani Durvasula
- “You can't force someone to respect you, but you can refuse to be disrespected.”
- “You will never really see how toxic someone is until you breathe fresher air.”
- “Stay away from people who can’t take responsibility for their actions and who make you feel bad for being angry at them when they do you wrong.”
- “Strength is removing your kids from a toxic environment; not learning to live with it for the sake of the kids.”
- “The truth always comes out in the end, no matter how hard anyone tries to hide it. Lies are just a temporary delay to the inevitable.”
- “I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you. I left because the longer I stayed, the less I loved myself.”
- “Nobody should be in a position where they are suffering abuse at the hands of another, and if this is the case for you, stopping the abuse by leaving the situation is the only course of action to take.” – Theresa Jackson
- “Some relationships are like broken glass. It's better to leave them alone than hurt yourself trying to put them back together.”
- “When someone treats you like crap, just remember it’s because there’s something wrong with them, not you. Normal people don’t go around destroying other people’s lives.”
- “Breakups hurt, but losing someone who doesn't appreciate you is actually a gain, not a loss.”
- “A narcissist will say ‘get over it', because your feelings are trivial to them. If it's not about them, they're not interested.”
- “It’s so nice when toxic people stop talking to you. It’s like the trash took itself out.” – Karen Salmansohn
- “Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.”
- “You don't attract narcissists because something is wrong with you. You attract narcissists because so much is right with you.”
- “Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.” – Deborah Reber
- “A narcissist doesn't break your heart, they break your spirit. That's why it takes so long to heal.”
- “Letting go of toxic people in your life is a big step in loving yourself.” – Hussein Nishah
- “If you hold on to hurt and anger with a narcissist, the children will have no normal parent. The narcissistic parent will use them as puppets, lovebomb and abandon them. You are their only hope.” – Tracy Malone
- “You don’t ever have to feel guilty about removing toxic people from your life. It’s one thing if a person owns up to their behavior and makes an effort to change. But if a person disregards your feelings, ignores your boundaries, and continues to treat you in a harmful way, they need to go.” – Daniell Koepke
- “The moment that you start to wonder if you deserve better, you do.”
- “Invalidation is about dismissing your experiences, thoughts and above all your emotions. Indeed the intention is to not even allow you to have those thoughts, experiences and emotions. It’s a way of invading your head and reprogramming it. It’s psychological abuse (messing with your thoughts) and emotional abuse (messing with your feelings).” – Danu Morrigan
- “Maybe, the lesson we can all learn from the inner sadness of a narcissist is to see through our own fabrications, our own illusions so that we can be set free to be real once more.” – Shannon L. Alder
- “Intuition – once you have had a narcissist in your life, you must develop your intuition and learn to listen to it and act accordingly.” – Tracy Malone
- “Just because someone desires you, does not mean that they value you.”
- “You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It won’t happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, ‘I don’t care how hard this is, I don’t care how disappointed I am, I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m moving on with my life.’” – Joel Osteen
- “A healthy relationship will never require you to sacrifice your friends, your dream, or your dignity.”
- “When it hurts to move on, just remember the pain you felt hanging on.”
- “The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” – Robert Hughes
- “When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.” – Brené Brown
- “Stay away from lazy parasites, who perch on you just to satisfy their needs, they do not come to alleviate your burdens, hence, their mission is to distract, detract and extract, and make you live in abject poverty.” – Michael Bassey Johnson
- “For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.” – John Steinbeck
- “Hate is the complement of fear and narcissists like being feared. It imbues them with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence.” – Sam Vaknin
- “Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- “At a moment when we must face too much self-righteousness and narcissism on our path, it is a soothing relief for our soul if we can permeate through the shallowness around and penetrate the essence of matters, allowing us to still our mind.” – Erik Pevernagie
At a moment when we must face too much self-righteousness and narcissism on our path, it is a soothing relief for our soul if we can permeate through the shallowness around and penetrate the essence of matters, allowing us to still our mind.” – Erik Pevernagie
- “The spirit of arrogance most definitely makes you shine. It paints a bright red target on your own forehead.” – Criss Jami
- “Imagining that you are deep and complex, but others are simple, is one of the primary signs of malignant selfishness.” – Stefan Molyneux
- “Narcissists damage and hurt but they do so offhandedly and naturally, as an afterthought. They are aware of what they are doing to others—but they do not care.” – Sam Vaknin
- “Being a control freak is a weakness, not a strength. If you can't allow others to shine, you're exhibiting signs of narcissism and showing a lack of self-confidence. It is isolation through ego.” – Stewart Stafford
- “The narcissist is like a bucket with a hole in the bottom: No matter how much you put in, you can never fill it up. The phrase “I never feel like I am enough” is the mantra of the person in a narcissistic relationship. That’s because to your narcissistic partner, you are not. No one is. Nothing is.” – Ramani Durvasula
- “Narcissism is not self-love. It's the opposite of that. It's a nagging horror that you are, deep down, unloveable. A narcissist needs the love, attention, and admiration of others to survive because he or she cannot produce enough healthy self-respect to be at peace.” – Deborah Orr
- “Narcissists have a tough job because perfection is viewed as either all or nothing: If you are not perfect, you are imperfect, and if you are imperfect, you are nothing.” – Theodore Millon
- “Before you think you are surrounded by idiots, make sure that you don’t suffer from narcissism.” – Giannis Delimitsos
- “Loneliness is a form of narcissism. A mother who is in harmony with her child, who understands her place in her child's life and her role in society, is never lonely. Through caring for her child, all her needs are fulfilled.” – Jessamine Chan
- “Most people are tormented by the conflict between their fear of standing out and their desire to be the center of attention.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana
- “Disease intensifies narcissism, especially if it is terminal.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana
- “A Narcissist is someone who sticks their head up their own ass, then blames you for the smell.” – Steve Maraboli
- “For some, their ‘self-love' was really just a hell that felt numb; they'd made themselves so protected, so delicate, that like jail-cells their boundaries had become.” – Criss Jami
- “Virtue is never its own reward for the narcissist.” – Dean Cavanagh
- “When your shadow grows bigger than you, know that your downfall is near.” – Abhijit Naskar
- “Humility, rather than involving the presence of certain thoughts or behaviors, might better be construed as the absence of narcissism, self-enhancement, or defensiveness.” – Christopher Peterson
- “I hate guys like that, people like that. It’s all about what they want. The attempts to repair are only for their own needs. It’s got nothing to do with love.” – Jacqueline Simon Gunn
- “If I could give the most concise and accurate definition of a narcissist, it would be this: ‘a person with a severe inferiority complex which has mutated in equally severe superiority complex’.” – Tyara Wolf
- “You will go from being the narcissist's greatest asset to becoming their greatest burden.” – Alice Little
- “We should keep in mind that a woman is not a narcissist just because she regularly practices self-care in order to stay physically attractive. The problem is when a woman is putting too much emphasis on her physical appearance, neglecting other dimensions of her being and using her image to mask all the complexes and insecurities she may be dealing with inside.” – Tyara Wolf
- “The personality complex of a liberal savior is one that fascinates me, as I believe it to be centered on extreme narcissism. I imagine them to be addicted to the feeling of accomplishment that is derived from helping someone inferior to them.” – Candace Owens
- “How many times do we have to repeat a failed strategy before it dawns on us that it’s a failed strategy? The answer, I think, depends on the size of our ego and the depth of our arrogance.” – Craig D. Lounsbrough
- “Googling yourself is an act rooted in either narcissism or paranoia or both, and it seems weird because it is weird.” – A.D. Aliwat
- “When narcissists ask ‘how do you feel’, they are actually saying, ‘I am not feeling good, and now listen to me.’” – Emma Xu
- “The only principle that governs their minds is the question ‘How do I look?’” – Haruki Murakami
- “You’ll never win the fight with someone who only lives in his reality.” – OurMindfulLife
- “Pay attention to the “buts” following an apology. That’s what they really want to say.” – Emma Xu
- “But I love you’ is not a free pass for cheating and abuse.” – Emma Xu
- “Run from people who say “you are so lucky to be with me.” If you really are, he won’t need to remind you.” – Emma Xu
- “The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.” – Bertrand Russell
- “I am a recovering narcissist. I thought narcissism was about self-love till someone told me there is a flip side to it. It is actually drearier than self-love; it is unrequited self-love.” – Emily Levine
- “Call it egotistical or narcissist, but I think that's what we all look for in books—the right stories that help us make sense of the world that we, on a very personal level, live in every day.” – John Corey Whaley
- “The artistic side of a person is never narcissistic; it's always empathic. It's always kind and compassionate.” – Jordan Gavaris
- “I think it's very difficult, and it requires a tremendous amount of spiritual integrity and discipline, to not be a narcissist in a culture that encourages it every step of the way.” – Alan Ball
- “What is most difficult is when the large part of me that is a narcissist grows weary and is overtaken by the self-loathing part that always lurks in the shadows waiting for an opportunity to shine.” – Greg Fitzsimmons
- “The truth is that both groups want to be noticed. Yet we view a man's desire for attention as a natural instinct; with a woman, we label her a narcissist.” – Emily Ratajkowski
- “The narcissist will throw in your face all that they have done for you but never say one word of all that you have done for them. Never.” – Anonymous
- “Hypocrissist: A narcissist whose head is so far up their butt they can't hear the hypocrisy coming out of their mouth.” – Joel McDonald
- “Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.” – Sigmund Freud
- “Self-awareness is not self-centeredness, and spirituality is not narcissism. ‘Know thyself' is not a narcissistic pursuit.” – Marianne Williamson
- “Narcissism is the part of my personality that I am the least proud of, and I certainly don't like to see it highlighted in everybody else I meet.” – Ben Affleck
- “Narcissism is not about self-love. It's a clinical trait that belies a deep sense of emptiness, low self-esteem, emotional detachment, self-loathing, extreme problems with intimacy.” – Drew Pinsky
- “Narcissism in moderate amounts is not harmful to health.” – Massimiliano Allegri
- “Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.” – Andre Dubus III
- “If we weren't born with anti-social passions—narcissism, envy, lust, meanness, greed, hunger for power, just to name the more obvious—why the need for so many laws, whether religious or secular, that govern behavior?” – Dennis Prager
- “I think a lot of self-importance is a product of fear. And fear, living in sort of an un-self-examined fear-based life, tends to lead to narcissism and self-importance.” – Moby
- “Narcissism is a strong word, but it is narcissistic to expect everybody in a culture to reflect your own image back at you.” – Indya Moore
- “The silent killer of all great men and women of achievement—particularly men, I don't know why; maybe it's the testosterone—I think it's narcissism. Even more than hubris. And for women, too. Narcissism is the killer.” – James Woods
- “Service is the only thing that's important about love. Everybody is worried about ‘losing yourself' – all this narcissism. Duty. We can't stand that idea now either… But duty might be a suit of armor you put on to fight for your love.” – Meryl Streep
- “Parents are destined to sin against their kids; it's inevitable. As is narcissism and the human condition. Everyone has their ego and their ambitions. Life happens in between.” – Alice Ripley
- “Narcissism is the result of longstanding behavioral patterns that reflect fixed brain functioning. It requires a lot of motivation to change these patterns.” – Drew Pinsky
- “You give up your narcissism, your egotism. That's how you achieve chemistry.” – Nick Nolte
Final Words
Dealing with a narcissist is tough. You must have the resilience to remain adamant in the fact of negativity and attacks.
You also need to learn how to love yourself. Staying with someone who only hurts you will do you no good—it will drain and dry you up until nothing’s left to fight for anymore.
Have you been in a relationship with a narcissist, and were you able to handle it well? We’d love to know your experience. Feel free to share your story in the comment section below.
Can you relate to any of the quotes above? If so, we’d love to know which one through the comment section as well.
And if you want more eye-opening quotes, be sure to check out these blog posts:
- 45 Toxic Family Quotes to Heal & Let Go of Your Pain
- 57 Fake Family Quotes to Cope with Two-Faced Relatives
- 5 Basic Types of Narcissists (and How to Identify Them)
- 61 Selfish Parents Quotes to Help You Cope Better
Finally, if you want to use these quotes to make a lasting change to your life, then check out and recite these 57 affirmations for success.
