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Quotes About Self-discovery

I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Si tenéis alguna empresa ante vosotros, tratad de hacerla con las ropas viejas. A los hombres les hace falta, no algo con lo que hacer, sino algo que hacer, o mejor, algo que ser. Tal vez no deberíamos procurarnos un traje nuevo, por harapiento y sucio que esté el viejo, hasta no habernos conducido, empeñado o embarcado de tal modo que podamos sentirnos hombres nuevos en el viejo.
~ Henry David Thoreau
A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.
~ Henry David Thoreau
It is very dissipating to be with people too much ... I cannot spare my moonlight and my mountains for the best of man I am likely to get in exchange.
~ Henry David Thoreau
I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one, be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Not till we are completely lost or turned around, do we begin to find ourselves.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography.
~ Henry David Thoreau
All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute?
~ Henry David Thoreau
We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography."* What
~ Henry David Thoreau
A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We know not yet what we have done, still less what we are doing. Wait till evening, and other parts of our day's work will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall discover the real purport of our toil. As when the farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can tell best where the pressed earth shines most.
~ Henry David Thoreau
I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead. The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.
~ Henry David Thoreau
A voice said to him—Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these.—But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect.
~ Henry David Thoreau
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.
~ Henry David Thoreau
beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
~ Henry David Thoreau
AÃ…Â¥ je tv?j život sebemizernÄ›jÅ¡í, utkej se s ním, prožívej ho.
~ Henry David Thoreau
I remind you that I have no faith. If I sought God, I find myself.
~ Henry de Montherlant
I cannot answer the question, 'Who am I?' except in terms of some sort of statement of the plans and purposes of my life," said Josiah Royce seventy years ago in The Philosophy of Loyalty. "I should say that a person, an individual self, may be defined as a human life lived according to a plan . . .
~ Henry Fairlie
I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.
~ Henry James
I don't need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to live. I can find it out for myself.
~ Henry James
Nu te mai stradui atat sa-ti formezi un caracter - e ca si cand ai incerca sa deschizi petalele unui boboc crud de trandafir. Traieste cum iti place, iar caracterul tau va avea singur grija de el.
~ Henry James
He goes very far, but it's quite possible he doesn't go far enough.
~ Henry James
I must live for myself at last, while there is still a handful left of me
~ Henry James