Quotes About Self-discovery

Write to save yourself ... and someday you'll write because you've been saved. You will feel terrible shame for this. Let your humility grow larger than your shame.

Write to save yourself,' Athos said, 'and someday you'll write because you've been saved.'" - from Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

I believe that true identity is found . . . in creative activity springing from within. It is found, paradoxically, when one loses oneself. Woman can best refind herself in some kind of creative activity of her own.

Perhaps both men and women in America may hunger, in our material, outward, active, masculine culture, for the supposedly feminine qualities of heart, mind and spirit--qualities which are actually neither masculine nor feminine, but simply human qualities that have been neglected. It is growth along these lines that will make us whole, and will enable the individual to become world to himself.

What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice!

One writes not to be read but to breathe...one writes to think, to pray, to analyze. One writes to clear one's mind, to dissipate one's fears, to face one's doubts, to look at one's mistakes--in order to retrieve them. One writes to capture and crystallize one's joy, but also to disperse one's gloom. Like prayer--you go to it in sorrow more than joy, for help, a road back to 'grace'. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh (War Within and Without: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh 1939-1944)

It is only in solitude that I ever find my own core.

Only when one is connected to one's inner core is one connected to others. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be re-found through solitude.

Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.

Woman must come of age by herself. This is the essence of coming of age -to learn how to stand alone.

There comes a moment when the things one has written, even a traveler's memories, stand up and demand a justification. They require an explanation. They query, 'Who am I? What is my name? Why am I here?

One must lose one's life to find it. Woman can best refind herself by losing herself in some kind of creative activity of her own.

When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.

Woman can best refind herself by losing herself in some kind of creative activity of her own. Here she will be able to refind her strength, the strength she needs to look and work at the second half of the problem - the neglected pure relationship. Only a refound person can refind a personal relationship.

Only when one is connected to one's inner core is one connected to others. And for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be re-found through solitude ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

We must re-learn to be alone.

Woman must come of age by herself. She must find her true center alone.

379I believe that what a woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly. What we fear is not so much that our energy may be leaking away through small outlets as that it may be going 'down the drain.

Be aware that you can truly help people only by aiding them to become what they are, not what you are.

Do you know what I think about crying? I think some people have to learn to do it. But once you learn, once you know how to really cry, there's nothing quite like it. I feel sorry for those who don't know the trick. It's like whistling or singing.

I assume I don't need an introduction.

And you must know we do not really change over time; we are as flowers unfolding, we merely become more nearly ourselves.

You're the mad one,' I said. 'If you could see yourself, hear your own voice, your music - which of course you play for yourself - you wouldn't see darkness, Nicki. You'd see an illumination that is all your own. Sombre, yes, but light and beauty come together in you in a thousand different patterns.

All my life,I've been afraid of things, as a child and a woman must be. I lied about it naturally. I fancied myself a witch and walked in dark streets to punish myself for my doubts. But I knew what it meant to be afraid. And now, in this darkness, I fear nothing. If you were to leave me here, I would feel nothing. I would walk as I am walking now. As a man, you can't know what I mean by what I say.You can't know a woman's vulnerability. You can't know the sense of power that belongs to me now.