Quotes About Self-discovery

every day a retreat from who she'd imagined she'd be.

Swimmer. Musician. Philosopher. Spouse. Traveller. Glaciologist. Happy. Loved. Nothing.

S)he no longer felt she was there simply to serve the dreams of other people. She no longer felt like she had to find sole fulfillment as some imaginary perfect daughter or sister or parter or wife or mother or employee or anything other than a human being, orbiting her own purpose, and answerable to herself.

Er wordt wel gezegd dat je of leest om aan de wereld te ontsnappen of om jezelf te vinden. Ik zie het verschil niet echt.We vinden onszelf door te ontsnappen. Het gaat er niet om waar je bent, maar waar je heen wilt, en zo.

You don't have to be an academic. You don't have to be anything. Don't force it. Feel your way, and don't stop feeling your way until something fits. Maybe nothing will. Maybe you are a road, not a destination. That is fine. Be a road.

When we take the external clutter away, we have to face the clutter inside ourselves.

If one advances confidently," Thoreau had written in Walden, "in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." He'd also observed that part of this success was the product of being alone. "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Chaque livre écrit est le produit d'un esprit humain dans une disposition particulière. Additionnez tous les livres, et vous obtenez la somme totale de l'humanité. Chaque fois que je lisais un bon livre, j'avais l'impression de lire une sorte de carte au trésor, et le trésor vers lequel elle me menait était en fait moi-même.

There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself. I don't really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping.

live any life we want. Any life. Dream big . . . You can be anything you want to be. Because in one life, you are.

When I let go of what I am,' said the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, 'I become what I might be.

She had a fire inside her. She wondered if the fire was to warm her or destroy her.

Montaigne said that the point of life is to give yourself to yourself.

She could plant a forest inside herself.

this collision between one's image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try and become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish." —James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

Life is "understood backward; but it must be lived forward" (Søren Kierkegaard)

the point of life is to give yourself to yourself.

Happiness is an accident of self-acceptance. It's the warm breeze you feel when you open the door to who you are.

It is tantalising, to be this close to revealing your own truth, like holding a bird you are about to set free.

Because now she saw the kinds of things she could do when she put herself to work. And that, actually, the life she had been living had its own logic to it.

If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it.

She wasn't a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano.

The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale. She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself. I don't really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping. It is not where we are, but where we want to go, and all that.