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Quotations about Self-Discovery Related Quotes Purpose Self Be Yourself Confidence Age
People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates. ~Thomas Szasz, "Personal Conduct," The Second Sin, 1973 I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of. ~Michel de Montaigne If you don't get lost, there's a chance you may never be found. ~Author Unknown I have set out to come upon a new me, to open to the things that have long beat with their insistence at my door. I do not wish to surpass anyone or anything. I pray only to outgrow myself in emancipation and consciousness. I stipulate nothing, save that I grow. I know the price and I will pay. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "A Soul's Faring: L," A Soul's Faring, 1921 [a little altered There is a proper focus for every man's capacity, but few find it; their occupation is like bad fitting spectacles. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897 One day to collect the scattered fragments of myself, and give them symmetry, and wholeness, and use. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), My Little Book of Life, 1912 I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ~Henry David Thoreau, 1854 A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. ~George Moore It is good to feel lost... because it proves you have a navigational sense of where "Home" is. You know that a place that feels like being found exists. And maybe your current location isn't that place but, Hallelujah, that unsettled, uneasy feeling of lost-ness just brought you closer to it. ~Erika Harris, empathicwriter.com If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead. ~Gelett Burgess Endurance is frequently a form of indecision. ~Elizabeth Bibesco, Haven, 195 I am... unassembled bits of life. I possess only a fraction of life because I possess only a fraction of myself. One day I shall come in entirety — maybe the entirety will redeem the parts. I shall come in the aggregate of me, and maybe that that has not had seeming relativity will show sequence. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "A Soul's Faring: XXXI," A Soul's Faring, 1921 Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, he wants to reestablish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys. ~Amiel, Journal, 1884 Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. ~Wallace Stevens One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. ~G.K. Chesterton, "The Logic of Elfland," Orthodoxy, 1908 If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions. ~Author Unknown It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts. ~K.T. Jong I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself. ~James Baldwin There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud. ~Carol Shields To the question of your life, you are the only answer. To the problems of your life, you are the only solution. ~Jo Coudert, Advice From A Failure (Thanks, Elizabeth!) Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. ~Henry David Thoreau A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942, translated from French In search of my mother's garden, I found my own. ~Alice Walker Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself. ~William Butler Yeats My confusion is but a phase — and I am not afraid of phases. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "Songs of Longing: XXIX," At the Roots of Grasses, 1923 If you haven't had at least a slight poetic crack in the heart, you have been cheated by nature. ~Phyllis Battelle Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time. ~Timothy Leary I've left Bethlehem and I feel free... I've left the girl I was supposed to be and some day I'll be born. ~Paula Cole Resolve to be thyself; and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery. ~Matthew Arnold, "Self-Dependence," Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems, 1852 To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet. ~Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, 1825 No one remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself. ~Thomas Mann Every one of us has in him a continent of undiscovered character. Blessed is he who acts the Columbus to his own soul. ~Author Unknown There's a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside. ~Pearl Bailey I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want. ~Mark Twain He who knows others is learned; He who knows himself is wise. ~Lao-tzu, Tao te Ching [Y]ou must learn what life is now, not from me, but from life itself; but, if you will hear an old man's opinion, I will give it you. If you think you can temper yourself into manliness by sitting here over your books, supposing you will grow into it as a matter of course by a rule of necessity, in the same way as your body grows old, it is the very silliest fancy that ever tempted a young man into his ruin. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. Go out into life, you will find your chance there, and only there. ~James Anthony Froude, The Nemesis of Faith, 1849, commonly misattributed to Henry David Thoreau Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. ~Alan Watts Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it's dark. ~Zen Proverb We are the products of editing, rather than authorship. ~George Wald, "The Origin of Optical Activity," Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 1975 To be too conscious is an illness — a real thoroughgoing illness. ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky You might say that we use ourselves to discover ourselves. ~Judith Hanson Lasater The degree to which a person can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth he can accept about himself without running away. ~Leland Val Van de Wall Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. ~Anaïs Nin There are... things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind. ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, "Notes from the Underground," 1864 Man is almost mad—mad because he is seeking something which he has already got; mad because he's not aware of who he is; mad because he hopes, desires and then ultimately, feels frustrated. Frustration is bound to be there because you cannot find yourself by seeking; you are already there. The seeking has to stop, the search has to drop.... ~Osho It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy. ~Lucille Ball Find what makes your heart sing and create your own music. ~Mac Anderson Oh! that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves. ~William Shakespeare, "Coriolanus" Know thyself, or at least keep renewing the acquaintance. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com That's not when it started, but it was one of those turning points where yet again the obvious became painfully clear to me. Roads diverge in the wood and I start climbing trees. ~Craig Childs, "About the Author," www.houseofrain.com It's terrifying to see someone inside of whom a vital spring seems to have been broken. It's particularly terrifying to see him in your mirror. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966 The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. ~Anna Quindlen Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering. ~St. Augustine I am a soul in process. I am life in the making. I am a weaver with shuttle and thread, and back in my loom the design begins to show. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), My Little Book of Life, 1912 When you re-read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before. ~Clifton Fadiman There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. ~Nelson Mandela For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed. ~Clifton Fadiman Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be. ~Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Confusion now hath made his masterpiece. ~William Shakespeare I know by the hunger that eats at my heart that there is a fulfilling answer.... I am come with a craving as deep as worlds. I am a wolf that sits back on its haunches in the night, at the edge of the wilderness, and wails, — a cry for its own that is unanswered. Maybe I am a wolf-dog. Maybe the wolf in me wails, and the dog in me answers with a moan, rent by contending forces. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "A Soul's Faring: IV," A Soul's Faring, 1921 I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be. ~Douglas Adams We run away all the time to avoid coming face to face with ourselves. ~Author Unknown When one feels pulled to do a particular thing, when one has passion for a certain life path, karma is always involved. In such an instance, when the goal is worthy and makes one happy, one should continue on that same life path. Just because the elephant cannot carry you anymore doesn't mean you should give up your goal. Continue down the path that makes you feel fulfilled. Those who continue on an unrewarding path for the sake of only monetary gain are displaying a lack of trust in life. ~Kwan Yin One day I shall come from far seeking with tales of the buried treasure. I look away to the distance and wonder what herbs of healing are growing on the far hills. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "Songs of Longing," At the Roots of Grasses, 1923 In order to find yourself you need to get lost in the forest of life. ~Mike Dolan, @HawaiianLife The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one's opinion but rather to know it. ~André Maurois The road to self-belief is potholed. ~Nyasha Madavo I prayed with my lips, but what was the thing that I prayed with my heartbeats, with my silent eyes? What was the secret thing of my longing? What was my fear?... God trusts His nights of silent, silver pourings, and His dawns of blatant splendor. He trusts His moons of molten gold, and His twilights of streaming beauty. Why do I not trust this glory-creature that is clamoring in me to be loosed, to be set free from the grey and the ashen— This paradise-bird-of-longing, this luxuriat of denial, this beauty-thing denied to beauty? ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "Prayers of a Worldling: III," A Soul's Faring, 1921 He not busy being born is busy dying. ~Bob Dylan It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling. ~Robert M. Pirsig A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. ~Jean de La Fontaine There is a limit to how much you can change to be liked for who you really are. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want. ~Ben Stein I go in conquest up and down the earth, when I must know that the thing must be wrested out of my own soul.... The answer is in me, or it is nowhere. I do not come asking you. I ask only myself. If it were in you, you could not impart it to me. I could not understand your words. I must bring the answer and the interpretation out of me. Until then I must go unanswered. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "A Soul's Faring: XXXII," A Soul's Faring, 1921 Driving down the wrong road and knowing it, The fork years behind, how many have thought To pull up on the shoulder and leave the car Empty, strike out across the fields; and how many Are still mazed among dock and thistle, Seeking the road they should have taken? ~Damon Knight, The Man in the Tree, 1984 What a gloomy thing, not to know the address of one's soul. ~Victor Hugo Knowing who you are is the best defense against who they think you are. ~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com Those who are brutally honest are seldom so with themselves. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966 Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it. ~Buddha By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear. ~George Herbert Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something. ~Carl G. Jung To be an explorer of life, and come with news from the far zone of the soul, with a new hope, a new peace, a new joy, a new meaning! ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "A Soul's Faring: LXIV," A Soul's Faring, 1921 We catch frightful glimpses of ourselves in the hostile eyes of others. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960 Keep a diary even if you rip it up every night. ~Terri Guillemets, "Meridian ink," 1995 [so that your heart may write to you "Know thyself?" If I knew myself, I'd run away. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes. ~Hugh Prather Somewhere that radiant thing, Life, lies latent in the brier stem of me, and one day it will burst forth in crimson roses. One day the new spring soil of me will emit its blossoming violet soul. One night the lark will sing in my trees. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "A Soul's Faring: XC," A Soul's Faring, 1921 Better to start up a thousand wrong roads than to spend your life going nowhere because you know the way. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com And if you find everything as soon as you look for it, you find it in vain, you look for it in vain. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin You'll never find peace of mind until you listen to your heart. ~George Michael, "Kissing A Fool" To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying "Amen" to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive. ~Robert Louis Stevenson Let your heart guide you. It whispers, so listen carefully. ~Littlefoot's mother, Land Before Time Basically we are all looking for someone who knows who we are and will break it to us gently. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life. ~James A. Michener It's a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself. Makes you wonder what else you can do that you've forgotten about. ~Alan Ball, American Beauty, 1999 Vague desires stir within me which blend together, and give birth to others which afterwards devour them. My desires are a cloud of birds whirling and hovering aimlessly; your desire is an eagle who has his eyes on the sun, and who is prevented by the lack of air from rising on his outstretched wings. Ah! if I could know what I want; if the idea which pursues me would extricate itself clear and precise from the fog that envelops it; if the fortunate or fatal star would appear in the depths of my sky; if the light which I am to follow, whether perfidious will-o'-the-wisp or hospitable beacon, would come and be radiant in the night; if my pillar of fire would go before me, even though it were across a desert without manna and without springs; if I knew whither I am going, though I were only to come to a precipice!—I would rather have the mad riding of accursed huntsmen through quagmires and thickets than this absurd and monotonous movement of the feet. To live in this way is to follow a calling like that of those horses which turn the wheel of some well with bandaged eyes, and travels thousands of leaves without seeing anything for a long time, and the bucket should have quite come up. ~Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin, 1835 One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche Better you don't search for who you are until you know who it is you want to find. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe. ~Thomas Carlyle If you're not a rebel by the age of twenty, you've got no heart, but if you haven't turned establishment by thirty, you've got no brains. ~Swimming with Sharks, 1994, written & directed by George Huang, spoken by the character Buddy Ackerman played by Kevin Spacey They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. ~Confucius Somewhere in me there has been confusion of identity. I do not know my own name. I do not know if I am marshglow or wormwort, daffodil or purslane. Once I thought maybe it was lily, or rose, or starmist. I have lost the words of the grasses and the friendliness of the trees. The leaves do not speak to me. The birds do not call my name. ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "A Soul's Faring: II," A Soul's Faring, 1921 Your distress about life might mean you have been living for the wrong reason, not that you have no reason for living. ~Tom O'Connor In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself. ~André Gide You cannot fully understand your own life without knowing and thinking beyond your life, your own neighborhood, and even your own nation. ~Johnnetta Cole There's more than one answer to these questions Pointing me in a crooked line. And the less I seek my source for some definitive The closer I am to fine. ~Indigo Girls, "Closer to Fine" A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything. ~Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Life of Johnson, 1783 No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious. ~George Bernard Shaw There is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives. ~Josephine Hart God, why do I storm heaven for answers that are already in my heart? Every grace I need has already been given me. Oh, lead me to the Beyond within. ~Macrina Wieherkehr Camouflage is a game we all like to play, but our secrets are as surely revealed by what we want to seem to be as by what we want to conceal. ~Russell Lynes [L]ife ceases to be a fraction and becomes an integer. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick, On Being a Real Person Never be afraid to sit awhile and think. ~Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun Truth hurts — not the searching after; the running from! ~John Eyberg A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson I will find my way! The birds have not chart of the skies, nor the fishes the paths of the sea. Time rolls to no man's determining, and none pilot the moon across the heavens. I will find my way! The winds are not leashed to a blowing, The seasons arrive in undirection, and the moles bore on in their unseeing — and I am not less — I will find my way! ~Muriel Strode (1875–1964), "At the Roots of Grasses: XXVI," At the Roots of Grasses, 1923 Decorate yourself from the inside out. ~Terri Guillemets I... recommend to every one of my Readers, the keeping a Journal of their Lives for one Week, and setting down punctually their whole Series of Employments during that Space of Time. This kind of Self-Examination would give them a true State of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. One Day would rectifie the Omissions of another, and make a Man weigh all those indifferent Actions, which, though they are easily forgotten, must certainly be accounted for. ~Joseph Addison, 1712 It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too. ~H.W. Shaw For souls in growth, great quarrels are great emancipators. ~Logan Pearsall Smith Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams How do I find my tune, my song, my personal harmony that's healing because it's me? ~Terri Guillemets All your life you pretend to be someone else, and it turns out that you were someone else pretending to be you. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com My own experience is that everybody is born with a certain talent, and unless he lives that talent to its fullest, something in him will remain missing. He will go on feeling that somehow something is not there that should be. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Living is being born slowly. It would be a little too easy if we could borrow ready-made souls. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942 If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven’t been born yet. ~Neil Simon Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. ~Oscar Wilde That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along. ~Madeleine L'Engle In the end you don't so much find yourself as you find someone who knows who you are. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and times — and this is the worst of all — before we have new ones. ~G.C. Lichtenberg There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away. ~Henry Ward Beecher You will never come up against a greater adversary than your own potential, my young friend. ~Michael Piller and Michael Wagner, Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Evolution," Dr. Paul Stubbs to Wesley Crusher, original airdate 43,125.8 Yes, I worry that somebody will discover the truth about me — and not tell me what it is. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com "Know thyself" — a maxim as pernicious as it is odious. A person observing himself would arrest his own development. Any caterpillar who tried to "know himself" would never become a butterfly. ~André Gide, Nouvelles Nourritures Real birthdays are not annual affairs. Real birthdays are the days when we have a new birth. ~Ralph Parlette If you aren't sure who you are, you might as well work on who you want to be. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams Readjusting is a painful process, but most of us need it at one time or another. ~Arthur Christopher Benson When your heart speaks, take good notes. ~Judith Campbell Like an old gold-panning prospector, you must resign yourself to digging up a lot of sand from which you will later patiently wash out a few minute particles of gold ore. ~Dorothy Bryant Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile. ~Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, 1893 Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality. ~Erich Fromm One must know one's own secret. ~Swami Nithyananda Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves. ~Robert Neelly Bellah, Habits of the Heart, 1985 The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live. ~Nicolas Chamfort The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change. ~Richard Bach There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms. ~George Eliot Man can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as... from a lack of bread. ~Richard Wright, Native Son, 1940 The truth is that it is natural, as well as necessary, for every man to be a vagabond occasionally. ~Samuel H. Hammond We have five senses in which we glory and which we recognize and celebrate, senses that constitute the sensible world for us. But there are other senses — secret senses, sixth senses, if you will — equally vital, but unrecognized, and unlauded. ~Oliver Sacks There is deep wisdom within our very flesh, if we can only come to our senses and feel it. ~Elizabeth A. Behnke There are people who live their whole lives on the default settings, never realizing you can customize. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com God hides things by putting them all around us. ~Author Unknown I think that wherever your journey takes you, there are new gods waiting there, with divine patience — and laughter. ~Susan M. Watkins Quality begins on the inside... and then works its way out. ~Bob Moawad
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