Quotes About Self-discovery

I have gone back to sleep in order to resist the forces of change. And I have stayed awake and been broken open. Both ways are difficult, but one way brings with it the gift of a lifetime. If we can stay awake when our lives are changing, secrets will be revealed to us—secrets about ourselves, about the nature of life, and about the eternal source of happiness and peace that is always available, always renewable, already within us.

I do not wish upon anyone a descent into hell. But if your life has to be turned inside out in order for you to know yourself—if the shadow of a shaman crosses your path and you turn and follow it down—I pray that you use its force wisely. I hope that you take the ultimate responsibility for your actions and that you consecrate any destruction to the rebuilding of your higher self and a more radiant life.

We are in search of our most authentic, vital, generous, and wise self.

In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods Where the straight way was lost. —DANTE ALIGHIERI

those who are willing to enter the woods of self-examination in order to retrieve what was never really lost.

Joseph Campbell calls the "hero's path." Some of us need a cataclysmic event to find our way toward "the center of our own existence.

Some of us aren't meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.

t's okay to let yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back. -

Before autumn Ellen was fifteen. During the summer there had always been food and she had grown less thin. Her bones had withdrawn under the flesh and her eyes were no longer hollow. Signs of woman begun to appear on her meagre body; woman took possession of her although she was hard like spines and sharp like flint. She looked at herself in the mirror of the creek, for she dared not unrobe herself in the house before the eyes of her mother.

Aunt Helen Beck did not believe in fate, but she did think that you made mistakes according to what you wanted in your heart, and she could not understand what it was she wanted this time, what she was trying to tell herself.

She'd let her eyes water so the view was blurry, which gave certain qualities of the world neglected by clear eyesight the chance to come forth, such as the shocking beauty of color, and she remembered this with compassion for that silly young self, which had deserved to have her hand held.

When my skin had gone back to its even tone I slept with another man and discovered, my hands lying awkwardly on the sheet at either side of me, that I had forgotten what to do with them. I'm responsible and an adult again, full time. What remains is that my sensation thermostat has been thrown out of whack; it's been years and sometimes I wonder whether my body will ever again register above lukewarm.

could i have loved you better? maybe. if that's true, then i'm sorry. could i have loved you more? i don't think it's possible.

amanda thought about her addiction to being on the move. about whether she was running away or running toward.

Why do people think being with someone is the answer to everything?

sometimes, you have to break your own heart.

Look at me. We aren´t them lauren. You´re not your mother or father any more than I´m my mother. You´re you and I´m me and I love you.

I'm broken, I have cut myself wide open. I can see my heart and it is not what I believed it was, it is not good and kind and all the things I have always thought I am.

I know who I want to be with, and it isn't her. - Ryan

I don't know how I know that, but I do. I can feel the beat of that truth inside me. Taste it bitter on my tongue. Sometimes, like now, I didn't think I want to know who I really am.

Queres ser feliz? - Sim. Não. Não sei. Que tipo de pergunta é essa? - Apenas uma simples - disse ela - queres ser feliz? - Eu não... acho que não sei como. - Só tu podes aprender. - disse ela.

I have found Ray's new girl. I have found the new me. I think about her all the way home, how she will cry and scream and plead just like I did. It makes me smile. Everyone on the bus who sees me smile looks away. They see that I am all wrong, that my smile means someone else's pain, but no one says anything.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She took long showers every night, swimming in the water rushing over her and washing her hair till it squeaked when she ran her hands down it, parents sighing why do you have to be so clean? It was like she knew, in a way. Like that water was grace and soon she would not be able to find it. Soon nothing would make her more than what she was. Nothing would make her whole.

Summarized) Forgiveness is a choice that presents itself to us in the form of three critical questions: 1) Can I give up the hope of a better past? 2) What is the day, the hour, the now - when I fulfill the promise to myself to let it go? 3) How will I integrate what's happened into who I choose to become in the future?