Quotes About Self-discovery

When I rummage in my own mind I find no noble sentiments about being companions and equals and influencing the world to higher ends. I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted. Think of things in themselves.

To be myself (I note) I need the illumination of other people's eyes, and therefore cannot be entirely sure what is my self.

Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles) but as a wedge of darkness.

Unless I can stretch and touch something hard, I shall be blown down the eternal corridors for ever. What then can I touch? What brick, what stone? and so draw myself across the enormous gulf into my body safely?

I suppose that I did for myself what psychoanalysts do for their patients. I expressed some very long felt and deeply felt emotion. And in expressing it I explained it and then laid it to rest.

Some people go to priests; others to poetry...I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken.

I want to give, to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.

It is much more important to be oneself than anything else.

I note however that this diary writing does not count as writing, since I have just re-read my year's diary and am much struck by the rapid haphazard gallop at which it swings along, sometimes indeed jerking almost intolerably over the cobbles.

Now then is my chance to find out what is of great importance, and I must be careful, and tell no lies.

To tell the truth about oneself, to discover oneself near at hand, is not easy.

Above all, you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness...

She liked to be alone; she liked to be herself

I am alone, said Orlando, aloud since there was no one to hear.

I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted.

There's no doubt in my mind that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice; & that interests me so that I feel I can go ahead without praise.' (26 July 1922)

One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with ones words

This fiddling and drifting and not impressing oneself upon anything – this always refraining and fingering and cutting things up into little jokes and facetiousness – that's what's so annihilating. Yet given little money, little looks, no special gift – what can one do? How could one battle? How could one leap on the back of life and wring its scruff?

Richard has improved. You are right, said Sally. I shall go and talk to him. I shall say goodnight. What does the brain matter, said Lady Rosseter, getting up, compared with the heart? I will come, said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was.

Continuerò ad azzardare, a cambiare, ad aprire la mente e gli occhi, rifiutando di lasciarmi incasellare e stereotipare. Ciò che conta è liberare il proprio io: lasciare che trovi le sue dimensioni, che non abbia vincoli.

any one who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, with extravagant enthusiasm.

Kim olduÄŸumu bilseydim umutsuzluÄŸa düÅŸerdim. 'Sen bu'sun veya ÅŸu'sun' diyen birisiyle tan??t?m ve hiçbir ÅŸey olmak istediÄŸimi hissettim.

Very gently and quietly, almost as if it were the blood singing in her veins, or the water of the stream running over stones, she became conscious of a new feeling within her. She wondered for a moment what it was, and then said to herself, with a little surprise at recognising in her own person so famous a thing: is happiness.

Things were not so simple after all. She could not understand even her own feelings. She saw the most cherished of her convictions put into practice - and her eyes filled with tears. She had won fame and independence and the right to live her own life - and she wanted something different.