Quotes About Self-discovery

Avoiding the Scylla of the nunnery, Hermia sails dangerously close to the Charybdis of Titania's lust for the ass-headed Bottom, but emerges safely, and somewhat more self-knowledgeably, into the orderly harbor of marriage.

I've never been lonely, just alone. I think people who can't stand being alone are silly. How do they know who they are or what they're like if they're never alone?

Goals have a way of refocusing your life. They give you purpose and a target to shoot for. They are the compass of our dreams, helping us set a steady course. Goals comprise direction and progress. When we lose sight of our goals, we tend to lose sight of ourselves and who we are trying to become, who God has made us to be.

We don't know what we want. We've never defined our goals or values or passions, so we're out of touch with our hearts' desires. And our growing responsibilities have numbed us to the possibilities around us and the passions within us.

was the sum of my experiences. I was my own person. I was who I needed to be, not what someone else wanted me to be.

When you're under fire, when it all changes and goes the other way, a lot of guys get panicky and lose their clarity, because they're all geared up for winning. But I love adversely - it's where I see a chance to prove myself to myself.

Where does passionate interest come from? My personal view is that it comes from the deepest level of our being—at the level of our true identity. It comes from the part of us that exists beyond the characteristics and personality traits we acquire as a result of our social upbringing.

The reason to read Blake and Dickinson and Freud and Dickens is not to become more cultivated or more articulate... The best reason to read them is to see if they may know you better than you know yourself. You may find your own suppressed and rejected thoughts flowing back to you with an "alienated majesty

What Proust is describing is an act of self-discovery on the part of his reader. Immersing herself in Proust, the reader may encounter aspects of herself that, while they have perhaps been in existence for a long time, have remained unnamed, undescribed, and therefore in a certain sense unknown. One might say that the reader learns the language of herself

The reader learns the language of herself; she is humanly enhanced, enlarging the previously constricting circle that made up the border of what she's been... her consciousness has been expanded.

Meditation did not relieve me of my anxiety so much as flesh it out. It took my anxious response to the world, about which I felt a lot of confusion and shame, and let me understand it more completely. Perhaps the best way to phrase it is to say that meditation showed me that the other side of anxiety is desire. They exist in relationship to each other, not independently.

The picture we present to ourselves of who we think we ought to be obscures who we really are.

Meditation is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe and tame its own manifestations.

The only way to find out where I was was to get out of the way and let myself happen.

A recently deceased American Zen master and navy veteran, John Daido Loori, used to say that those who think Buddhism is just about stillness end up sitting very silently up to their necks in their own shit.

WILL'S RULES FOR LIVING #7: SOMETIMES, IN ORDER TO GET COMPLETELY SANE, YOU HAVE TO GO A LITTLE CRAZY.

shakes alone." Nick

I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away.

The story of an alienated young man cosseted by privilege, smothered by the comforts that surround him, and determined to listen to himself had come to feel personal in a way he had never imagined.

The romantic wants to create a world where he or she will possess a fully integrated, unconflicted identity—where the answers to the questions Who am I? and What are we? are exactly the same.

Solitude is different from loneliness. Solitude is rich, inspiring, and restful; replete with space and possibility. Loneliness is empty, pathetic, and enervating; bereft of power and potential. Lonely people expect others to fill their inner void, whereas lovers of solitude—which is what I invite you to become on this journey—recognize that time alone is precious, a refuge where you can practice meeting yourself in the mirror of the blank page.

Solitude and loneliness are two separate things. One you choose out of wisdom, the other out of necessity." -Mark Miller

To find meaning and truth in life place a blindfold on and observe your surroundings, you may find it right in front of you."-Mark Miller

To see your-self you must first be yourself, to be your-self you must first know yourself, and to know your-self you must first love your-self more than anything in the world."-Mark Miller