Quotes About Self-discovery

Forget about enlightenment. Sit down wherever you are And listen to the wind singing in your veins. Feel the love, the longing, and the fear in your bones. Open your heart to who you are, right now, Not who you would like to be. Not the saint you're striving to become. But the being right here before you, inside you, around you. All of you is holy. You're already more and less Than whatever you can know. Breathe out, touch in, let go.

Because in the long run' Stoner said, 'it isn't Edith or even Grace, or the certainty of losing Grace, that keeps me here; it isn't the scandal or the hurt to you or me; it isn't the hardship we would have to go through, or even the loss of love we might have to face. It's simply the destruction of ourselves, of what we would do'.

But don't you know, Mr Stoner?' Sloane asked. 'Don't you understand about yourself yet? You're going to be a teacher.

It was himself that he was attempting to define as he worked on his study. It was himself that he was slowing shaping, it was himself that he was putting into a kind of order, it was himself that he was making possible.

I have come to believe that in the life of every man, late or soon, there is a moment when he knows beyond whatever else he might understand, and whether he can articulate the knowledge or not, the terrifying fact that he is alone, and separate, and that he can be no other than the poor thing that is himself.

And we have come out of this, at least, with ourselves. We know that we are — what we are.

I hate and I love, Catullus said, speaking of that Clodia Pulcher whose family caused so much difficulty in Rome, even in our time and long after her death. It is not enough; but what better way might we begin to discover that self which is never wholly pleased or displeased with what the world offers?

È facile considerarsi per bene, quando non si ha alcun motivo per non esserlo. Bisogna innamorarsi, per capire un po' come si è fatti.

She was an only child, and loneliness was one of the earliest conditions of her life.

Bisogna innamorarsi per capire un po' come si è fatti.

He spoke more confidently and felt a warm hard severity gather within him. He suspected that he was beginning, ten years late, to discover who he was; and the figure he saw was both more and less than he had once imagined it to be.

It takes being in love to learn something about yourself.

He suspected that he was beginning, ten years late, to discover who he was; and the figure he saw was both more and less than he had once imagined it to be.

For it seems to me now that when I read those books and wrote my words, I read and wrote of a man who bore my name but a man whom I hardly know. Strain as I might, I can hardly see him now; and when I glimpse him, he recedes as in a mist, eluding my most searching gaze. I wonder, if he saw me, would he recognize what he has become? Would he recognize the caricature that all men become of themselves? I do not believe that he would.

For I have returned to that learning which I abandoned many years ago, and it is likely that I should not have done so had not I been condemned to this loneliness; I sometimes can almost believe that the world in seeking to punish me has done me a service it cannot imagine.

A sense of his own identity came upon him with sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

In my experience,' he told me, 'if you run away from a thing just because you don't like it, you don't like what you find either.

Maddie quickly pulled down the blackout curtains over her bright and vulnerable soul.

I was so scared to give up depression, fearing that somehow the worst part of me was actually all of me.

I mean, if you were to find a shattered mirror, find all the pieces, all the shards and all the tiny chips, and have whatever skill and patience it took to put all that broken glass back together so that it was complete once again, the restored mirror would still be spiderwebbed with cracks, it would still be a useless glued version of its former self, which could show only fragmented reflections of anyone looking into it. Some things are beyond repair. And that was me.

Every time I took a long leave from home, I felt as if I were going to conquer the world. Or rather, take possession of what is my birthright, my inheritance.

Not only does travel give us a new system of reckoning, it also brings to the fore unknown aspects of our own self. Our consciousness being broadened and enriched, we shall judge ourselves more correctly.

You do not travel if you are afraid of the unknown, you travel for the unknown, that reveals you with yourself.