Quotes About Self-discovery

Loneliness is one thing, solitude another: you have learned that - now!

In the end one experiences only oneself.

The great epochs of life come when we gain the courage to re-christen our evil as what is best in us

What do you plan to do in the land of the sleepers? You have been floating in a sea of solitude, and the sea has borne you up. At long last, are you ready for dry land? Are you ready to drag yourself ashore?

Any human being who does not wish to be part of the masses need only stop making things easy for himself. Let him follow his conscience, which calls out to him: "Be yourself! All that you are now doing, thinking, desiring, all that is not you.

I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still. And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience—a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself.

He wants to be known deep down, abysmally deep down, before he is capable of being loved at all; he dares to let himself be fathomed. He feels that his beloved is fully in his possession only when she no longer deceives herself about him, when she loves him just as much for his devilry and hidden insatiability as for his graciousness, patience, and spirituality.

Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke. Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude. Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?

How changed Zarathustra is! Zarathustra has become a child, an awakened one. What do you plan to do in the land of the sleepers? You have been floating in a sea of solitude, and the sea has borne you up. At long last, are you ready for dry land? Are you ready to drag yourself ashore?

The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us.

Whoever looks into himself as into vast space and carries galaxies in himself, also knows how irregular all galaxies are; they lead into the chaos and labyrinth of existence.

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge--and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves--how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves?

Knowing one's 'individuality'. - We are too prone to forget that in the eyes of people who are seeing us for the first time we are something quite different from what we consider ourselves to be: usually we are nothing more than a single individual trait which leaps to the eye and determines the whole impression that we make.

We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers, and with good reason. We have never looked at ourselves.

Ah, give me madness, you heavenly powers! Madness, that I may at last believe in myself!

A light has dawned for me: I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish. But I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves— and who want to go where I want to go.

Detesto seguir alguém assim como detesto conduzir. Obedecer? Não! E governar, nunca! Quem não se mete medo não consegue metê-lo a ninguém, E só aquele que o inspira pode comandar. Já detesto guiar-me a mim próprio! Gosto, como os animais das florestas e dos mares, De me perder durante um grande pedaço, Acocorar-me a sonhar num deserto encantador, E forçar-me a regressar de longe aos meus penates, Atrair-me a mim próprio... para mim.

If someone wants to seem to be something, stubbornly and for a long time, he eventually finds it hard to be anything else. The profession of almost every man, even the artist, begins with hypocrisy, as he imitates from the outside, copies what is effective.

The minds of others I know well; But who I am I cannot tell

The higher philosophical man has solitude not because he wishes to be alone, but because he is something that finds no equals.

I love to lose myself for a while.

flee, my friend, into thy solitude! i see thee defended with the noise of great men, and stung all over with the stings of little ones. Admirably do forest and rock know how to be silent with thee. resemble again the tree which thou lovest

Verhasst ist mir das Folgen und das Führen. Gehorchen? Nein! Und aber nein - Regieren! Wer sich nicht schrecklich ist, macht Niemand Schrecken: Und nur wer Schrecken macht, kann Andre führen. Verhasst ist mir's schon, selber mich zu führen! Ich liebe es, gleich Wald- und Meeresthieren, Mich für ein gutes Weilchen zu verlieren, In holder Irrniss grüblerisch zu hocken, Von ferne her mich endlich heimzulocken, Mich selber zu mir selber - zu verführen.

When your sight has become good enough to see the bottom of the dark well of your being and knowing, you may also see in its mirror the distant constellations of future cultures.