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Quotes About Self-discovery

Stay true to yourself and listen to your inner voice. It will lead you to your dream.
~ James Ross
A wise man travels to discover himself.
~ James Russell Lowell
The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.
~ James Russell Lowell
The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.
~ James Russell Lowell
I never found out exactly what it was that had hurt my friend so–something working in him a long time, that finally found purchase. In future years I'd come to recognize similar things scrabbling for footholds within myself. They were already there, of course, even then. Sometimes at night I heard them breathing.
~ James Sallis
I'm useless. I quit everything I try.' 'That doesn't make you useless. It means you haven't quit on finding the thing that's right for you.
~ James Stewart
Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
~ James Truslow Adams
It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you t
~ Donna Tartt
Exactly. And how did they drive people mad? They turned up the volume of the inner monologue, magnified qualities already present to great excess, made people so much themselves that they couldn't stand it.
~ Donna Tartt
liked the thought of traffic and crowds, of working in a bookstore, waiting tables in a coffee shop, who knew what kind of odd, solitary life I might slip into? Meals alone, walking the dogs in the evenings; and nobody knowing who I was.
~ Donna Tartt
It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?
~ Donna Tartt
I knew my mother's feet, her clothes, her two-tone black and white shoes - and long after I was sure of it I made myself stand in their midst, folded deep inside myself like a sick pigeon with its eyes closed.
~ Donna Tartt
DAVE THE SHRINK HAD mentioned more than once that he wished I would develop a hobby—advice I resented, as the hobbies he suggested (racquetball, table tennis, bowling) all seemed incredibly lame. If he thought a game or two of table tennis was going to help me get over my mother, he was completely out to lunch.
~ Donna Tartt
It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think? Remember the Erinyes?
~ Donna Tartt
Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: "Be yourself." "Follow your heart.
~ Donna Tartt
Is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name? It's not about the outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn't understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out. A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help.
~ Donna Tartt
Who knew it was in my power to make anyone so happy? Or that I could ever be so happy myself?
~ Donna Tartt
If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, it it better to turn away? Or- like Boris- is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?
~ Donna Tartt
A hundred things to do, but only one thing to be, he said, obstinately. But perhaps I don't feel myself worthy of such a wealth of opportunity?
~ Doris Lessing
It's amazing what you find out about yourself when you write in the first person about someone very different from you.
~ Doris Lessing
Es terrible destruir la imagen que una persona tiene de sí misma en aras de la verdad o cualquier otra abstracción. ¿Cómo saber si será capaz de crear otra que le permita seguir viviendo?
~ Doris Lessing
For better or worse, we are prepared to experiment with ourselves, to try and be different kinds of people. But you simply submitted to something.
~ Doris Lessing
Younger woman says, "I'm not going to be like my mother. You're maniacs. You're mad." "Yes," [older woman responds] "I know it. And so you won't be. The best of luck to you. And what are you going to be instead?
~ Doris Lessing
Category: Inner-space fiction For there is never anywhere to go but in.
~ Doris Lessing