Quotes About Self-discovery

Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there.

It doesn't matter how the paint is put on,' he wrote in describing his method, 'as long as something is said. Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

The first thought was this: that he was a foolish old man, because all his life he'd been looking for something and it was only when Anna joined him in the bar that evening that he realized that home is not something you find outside yourself; home is something you carry inside you, and it's made from the memories of the people you love, and the people who have loved you.

It is, perhaps, part of the human condition that children, as they grow to adulthood, must disentangle themselves from who their parents dreamt they might be, in order to figure out who they really are or hope to be. For

I'm working on my own life story. I don't mean I'm putting it together; no, I'm taking it apart.

I was like, Am I gay? Am I straight? And I realized...I'm just slutty. Where's my parade?

I was like, Am I gay? Am I straight? And I realized...I'm just slutty. Where's my parade?

I'm not going to die because I failed as someone else. I'm going to succeed as myself.

We must know who we are, so we can know what we want, so we don't end up wanting the wrong thing and get it and realize we don't want it, because by then it is too late.

How must he prove himself? What was it they wished to know of him? And what did he know of himself here where loneliness was an unavoidable element of life, and a man must rely solely on himself?

As we come to the end of ourselves, we open the door to discovering the One who created us anew. The One who can whisper to us who we really are as we pilgrim toward our truest and deepest selves.

Vous ne pouvez pas le croire, vous les hommes, mais la seule raison pour laquelle les femmes assument ce qui vous convient le plus, c'est que vous les empêchez de découvrir ce qui leur convient à elles. Si elles avaient la liberté, si elles avaient la sagesse de pleinement développer leur force et leur beauté de femmes, elles ne souhaiteraient jamais être des hommes ou semblables à des hommes.

Let every woman, who has once begun to think, examine herself

Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart," Rilke wrote, advising a young poet, "and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue.… Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer.… [T]his is what you must work on however you can and not waste too much time and too much energy on clarifying your attitude to other people."9

It's been said thousands of times, in all faiths and philosophies. Know thyself. What may be less clear in these wise expressions is the reason we learn to know ourselves: we develop a knowledge of self so that we can give up the self and serve others.

Not that it will be easy for you," Miryam continued. "But for the moment - look - it's a wonderful, mysterious thing to be a girl." And, looking at her reflection, Laura thought this might be true.

For me, literature is a revolutionary force, it requires courage and risk-taking, it must have the ability to thrust you out of your comfort zone, take you on a dangerous journey, a journey into the unknown, and then bring you back to the centre of yourself.

Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.

time-out here on the edge of ourselves.

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

From the time I arrived on the Cape, one of the things I chose explicitly was to put my writing first. Everything else in my life waxed and waned, but writing, I discovered during my restructuring, was my real core. Not any relationship. Not any love. Not any person. I had become more selfish and less accessible. I ceased to be the universal mommy of the tribe. I wanted to see people when I was done with my writing for the day, and not in the middle of my work time.

There was a girl, once upon a time and in your time. She embraced her life up to a point, then rejected it, and from that rejection have come all her difficulties.

What I would have to do later, starting in college and in the years following, to become a person of inner consequence: break that fawning inner self into pieces.