Quotes About Self-discovery

From Pessoa: "Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me.

Today I feel that I shall win through. I have come to the gateway of the simple; I am now content to see things as they are. I have gained freedom myself; I shall allow freedom to others. In my work will be my salvation.

I have read in books that we are called 'caged birds'. I cannot speak for others, but I had so much in this cage of mine that there was not room for it in the universe- at least that is what I then felt.

He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow. I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being.

The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end. My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said, "Here art thou!" The question and the cry, "Oh, where?" melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance, "I am!" XIII

He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow. I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being. XXX

Sen beni her zaman reddedip, zay?f, ÅŸüpheli arzular?n tehlikesinden kurtararak günden güne senin taraf?ndan kabul edilmeye lay?k bir hale getiriyorsun.

I really did think at one time that I was on the verge of becoming a poet, but Providence was kind enough to save me from that disaster.

I came out alone on my way to my tryst. But who is this that follows me in the silent dark? I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not. He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter.

No puedo hallar descanso; soy un extraño para mi propio corazón.

My husband was very eager to take me out of purdah. One day I said to him, "What do I want with the outside world?" "The outside world may want you," he replied.

Perv." He pointed to himself. "Male and eighteen. What's your point?

Podría ser que solo cuando ya es demasiado tarde para escapar nos demos cuenta de que siempre hemos sido libres.

This anti-description, for want of a better way of putting it, had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition: while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank. Yet this shape, even while its content remained unknown, gave her for the first time since the incident a sense of who she now was.

literature has long since discovered and documented this place of which I thought myself to be the first inhabitant,…

I could never reconcile myself to the fact that just as you've recovered from your own childhood, and finally crawled out of the pit of it and felt the sun on your face for the first time, you have to give up that place in the sun to a baby you're determined won't suffer the way you did, and crawl back down into another pit of self-sacrifice to make sure she doesn't!

I saw, in other words, that I was alone, and saw the gift and the burden of that state.

mutual frankness that she could work out who she herself was and what she actually wanted.

I said I wasn't sure: when people freed themselves they usually forced change on everyone else. But it didn't necessarily follow that to stay free was to stay the same. In fact, the first thing people sometimes did with their freedom was to find another version of the thing that had imprisoned them. Not changing, in other words, deprived them of what they'd gone to such trouble to attain.

It may be the case, she said, that it is only when it is too late to escape that we see we were free all along.

Leaving things behind and starting again is a way of coping with difficulties. I learnt very early in my life that I was able to leave a place and still remain myself.

She was, I saw, goading herself on: she wanted to Traverse boundaries, as though to prove to herself that she was free.

Abraçou o conceito inteiro quase da noite para o dia: podia decidir como queria ser e então sê-lo. Não existia predestinação alguma; agora entendia que aquela noção de si mesmo como uma sina e uma maldição que havia pairado como uma mortalha sobre toda a sua vida podia ficar para trás.

by revealing her true beauty and potential, she was somehow less safe than she had been before. I couldn't bear the thought of the hopes and possibilities that might come from this revelation, and what their crushing might do to her. Safer to go around in a Mother Hubbard, not risking anything!