Quotes About Self-discovery

The poet, as everyone knows, must strike his individual note sometime between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. He may hold it a long time, or a short time, but it is then that he must strike it or never. School and college have been conducted with the almost express purpose of keeping him busy with something else till the danger of his ever creating anything is past.

Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found out it was ourselves.

She believed in the miraculous. Or she had, until she reached an age when, all of a sudden, she realized that the life she was living was, in fact, her life. The clay of her being, so long infinitely malleable, had been formed, hardened into what now seemed a palpable, unchanging object, a shell she inhabited.

Some people live their entire life not knowing who they are, others live their life thinking they are something they are not. Only a luck few are blessed enough to find themselves in someone else.

The work of the art student is no light matter. Few have the courage and stamina to see it through. You have to make up your mind to be alone in many ways. We like sympathy and we like to be in company. It is easier than going it alone. But alone one gets acquainted with himself, grows up and on, not stopping with the crowd. It costs to do this. If you succeed somewhat you may have to pay for it as well as enjoy it all your life.

Those that go searching for love only make manifest their own lovelessness, and the loveless never find love, only the loving find love, and they never have to seek for it. D. H. Lawrence1

Love brings up everything unlike itself so that you can let go of fear and be the loving person you truly are.

Happiness is your original nature. It is YOU minus your neurosis.

The hypermature man wants laughter, warmth, and closeness, but doesn't know how to achieve them and has difficulty letting himself go long enough to try. Change is slow for him, and he needs a patient partner who can see a great person behind the seriousness. Besides, he will never let you down.

Of course, it is very difficult, and often impossible, for someone else to give you what you cannot find in yourself.

A mãe teve reuniões com vãrios professores. (...) «Robert vive num mundo construído por ele. Eu sei que ele é meu filho, mas por vezes tenho a sensação de que ele veio não de mim e do meu marido, mas de algum outro lugar para onde tenta voltar (...)»".

And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before.

I could settle for being a man, or I could struggle to become a human being.

When things are easy a person doesn't really learn about himself. It's what a person does at the moment of his greatest struggle that shows him who he really is. Some people never get that moment. The U-Who is my moment. What I do now is what I am.

Most men, it seemed to them, went through life never really knowing themselves. A man might consider himself noble or brave or just, they believed, but until he was truly tested it would always be mere opinion.

It can be said that life's perhaps most fundamental dynamic is the attempt to move from a lower form of experience and consciousness to a higher (or deeper) level of consciousness, from a diffuse identity to a more consolidated and structured identity.

You are not a mere spectator at a contest between cancer cells and killer drugs. Your attitude is important. Your will to get healthy. People give up; sometimes it seems easier to die than hang in there, go the distance... You've got to be your own hero. People need to find things inside themselves they never knew were there.

Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, "My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body." Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate… . If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him in yourself.

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.

I mean, we're all trying to find out who the hell we are, aren't we?

You're on your own now. You are not helpless. You will find your way.

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

Once you've experienced the joy of taking the first step, you can decide whether it's appropriate to take another. You'll know you're ready when your current step becomes automatic, effortless, and even pleasurable. But don't let anyone pressure you... If you ever feel yourself dreading the activity or making excuses for not performing it, it's time to cut back on the size of the step.

What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think to ask." —Sam Keen